Convention Center Project Reported on Schedule; 57 Groups Booked

The San Diego convention center is about 30% complete and on schedule for completion on May 11, 1989, a City Council committee was told Wednesday.

In a briefing that covered much territory, the council’s Rules Committee was also told some things it already knew: that the center, with 354,000 square feet of exhibit space, will be too small in comparison with its West Coast competitors; that it has too few parking spaces, and that it needs to find a large storage and marshaling yard for big trucks.

The committee also was told some things it didn’t know: 57 groups have already been booked into the center, reaching to the year 1997; 221 others have made tentative bookings, and the center’s operators are attempting to have total control over food and beverages served at the facility, a proposal that has run into opposition from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, or ABC.

As for the cost of the center, which according to the San Diego Unified Port District is now budgeted at $138.5 million, it will have to be increased by $5 million--bringing the total to about $143.5 million--to pay for the facility’s complete furnishing and outfitting.

Billy Crockett, a representative of Fluor Constructors Inc., the center’s construction manager, told the committee that, so far, “things are moving just according to plan.” Crockett is Fluor’s top official on the 11-acre job site at the foot of 5th Avenue, on San Diego Bay.

Steel Shipment Late

He said that, by January, work on the elevated portion of the center, starting with the mezzanine, will be evident. The only hitch in construction so far, Crockett said, is that the first shipment of steel from Korea was 35 days late and that the last shipment will probably be 13 days late.

As a result, he said, completion of construction could be delayed two weeks. This is not considered a problem because it’s expected to take a few months to outfit the center after construction is finished.

Sandra Butler, vice president of sales for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, or ConVis, said 57 conventions had made definite bookings with the center, and that the total is expected to hit 70 to 75 by the end of the year. Most of these are large conventions, she said, that require an average of about 10 days, from start to finish. She said bookings are running equal to projections.

If the 70 conventions are definitely booked, Butler said, it would translate into about 1 million room nights of business for hotels and $7 million to the city through the transient occupancy tax. She noted, in response to a question from Councilwoman Judy McCarty, that despite a boycott led by local black leaders in protest of the recent ballot measure rescinding the name of Martin Luther King Way, ConVis has yet to receive “one inquiry” about the matter from potential convention and meeting organizers.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor singled out a few areas she said concerned her the most. She noted, for example, the small size of the facility in comparison with San Diego’s competition, primarily convention centers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, all of which are already larger or will be after current expansions are completed.

“We are very small in the West,” Butler said.

Not Enough Parking

“Before you can expand, you have to complete the center,” said Jim Granby, president of the San Diego Convention Center Corp., the group that will operate the facility.

Although the center will have 2,000 underground parking spaces--1,100 of which will be designated for the facility and the rest reserved for the adjacent San Diego Marriott Hotel (formerly the Hotel Inter-Continental)--they won’t be enough to accommodate some exhibits, particularly those popular with local residents, such as an auto or garden show.

Granby said there is a possibility of using an adjacent 17-acre site south of the center for surface parking, at least temporarily. The site has also been identified as the area that would be used when the center is expanded.

Granby and others noted that a marshaling area for semitrailer trucks, which will transport equipment to be used at the convention center, has been tentatively selected. The property, controlled by the Port District, lies under the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, roughly between Harbor Drive and the bay.

The mayor and Granby agreed that one of the most important aspects of operating the center will be the character of its service and the quality of the food and beverages served. Word of bad service, food and drink travels fast in the convention industry and translates into lost business, Granby said.

The Convention Center Corp., he said, is attempting to have total control in this area, rather than contracting with a concessionaire who would pay the corporation a percentage of its profits. Granby said the corporation wants to use revenues from the sale of food and beverages to offset the expected deficit of operating the facility.

But, he said, the state ABC has ruled that the corporation, as a state agency under the law, “can’t participate in the sharing of profits from alcoholic beverages.”

The mayor promised that she and the rest of the City Council will lobby the state to lift the restriction.

It’s also apparent, Granby said, that the Port District’s $5-million budget for furnishing and outfitting the center needs to be doubled. Members of the Board of Port Commissioners have acknowledged that the budget is inadequate, though a decision on increasing the allocation has yet to be made.

One of the worst things the city could do, Granby said, would be to shift high school graduations and other similar free community events to the center because it will detract from the “economic integrity of the facility.”

Donna Alm, a spokeswoman for Convention Center Corp., told reporters later that the debate between architects over the center’s interior color scheme, which generated headlines in September, has been resolved. The main colors will be gray, with some red highlights, and the meeting rooms will be done in dark blue and aqua.

CONVENTION CENTER BUDGET

The budget, including actual expenditures and expenditures to be made in the future, for the San Diego convention center:

$118.6 million--construction of the building.

$5.2 million--excavation of the site. *

$7.3 million--payments to architects.

$2.4 million--payments to Fluor Constructors Inc., for construction management.

$5 million--for furniture, fixtures and equipment for the center. **

Total: $138.5 million.

* Total cost for excavation of the site, which may reach $6 million, is the subject of a lawsuit between HuntCor Inc. of Phoenix and the San Diego Unified Port District.

** The $5 million is said to be insufficient and will have to be doubled.

Source: San Diego Unified Port District