Convention Center Is Raising Hopes for Downtown Vitality

When completed late next year, the $150-million San Diego convention center will be the single most expensive building ever built and paid for by local government in San Diego County.

But its supporters believe it will be much more than that, something which transcends measurement by concrete and dollars.

In the same way that San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, California Tower and Horton Plaza have grown into community landmarks and evoke civic images carried far beyond the physical confines of the city, the center, if successful, holds similar potential as a catalyst.

“It will take some time, a little aging, but I think it will happen. It’ll give us a little zip,” said Bill Rick, who has been immersed in the project for eight years as a board member for the San Diego Unified Port District, the agency paying for the center’s construction.

There is, also, the center’s more immediate impact in its downtown surroundings, an area in the throes of a fitful revitalization.

An institutional anchor on the southern waterfront, the convention center is envisioned as a people factory capable of producing a steady supply of thousands of free-spending consumers a month to a downtown market that in many areas--such as the Gaslamp Quarter--is in dire need of just that extra margin of business to stay alive.

History Marked by Controversy

“The convention center has been key to downtown redevelopment programs since the early 1970s,” said Pam Hamilton, acting executive director of the Centre City Development Corp., the agency in charge of downtown’s renewal.

In one sense, the center is long overdue, particularly for a community that attracts so many tourists. Of the nation’s 10 largest cities, San Diego is the only one without a convention center. That, as much as anything else, is testimony to the project’s history, one marked by controversy, delays and budget-bursting construction estimates.

The center was to have been opened by now. But, most recently, it was delayed more than a year when, in 1986, the lowest bid to build the 1.75-million-square-foot structure came in $22 million over what planners had figured to spend.

Port commissioners, facing heavy pressure from the region’s hotel industry, nonetheless rejected it, causing further anxiety.

But today, the ghosts that have haunted the project seem to have disappeared into the bayside mist, replaced by the cold reality of concrete and steel rising from the ground on the 11-acre job site at the foot of 5th Avenue.

When all the expenses are tabulated, including expenses for engineering, architectural design, excavation, furnishings and the like, the center’s cost could eventually reach $160 million, according to Rick.

Whatever the final cost, the center will be unique to new centers across the country in that, when it opens, it will have no debt. That’s because the San Diego Unified Port District has essentially written a check to cover it. Made wealthy by fees from its properties--principally a prosperous tourist-oriented waterfront and an equally

bustling airport--the Port District didn’t need to sell bonds or take out a loan. The agency will simply dip into its extensive reserves and pay for it.

As for the land on which the center is being built, that too belongs to the Port District. Once completed, the City of San Diego will lease the center from the Port District for 20 years at $1 a year.

Aside from work at the convention center site itself, the city, the Port District and other government agencies are pouring in money to upgrade the surroundings.

Though millions of dollars will be spent on a linear parkway across the street, on realigning Harbor Drive and on cutting through 1st and Front streets across the railroad tracks to link them with Harbor Drive, the most expensive project of all will be an expansion of the trolley system.

The so-called $40-million Bay Side line is supposed to be ready by the time the center is ready for major conventions in early 1990. But there’s no assurance that that will occur, mainly because of complex negotiations involving the city and Santa Fe over the purchase of the railroad’s right of way, according to William Lieberman, director of planning and operations for the Metropolitan Transit Development Board.

Lieberman says that all the engineering for the two-mile extension is done and the district is ready to go out for bids next month, but that everything depends on the right-of-way negotiations.

Construction of the trolley line, which will run in front of the center and take convention delegates to nearby hotels and downtown, will take about 18 months, Lieberman said. If the trolley is not built in time, buses will have to provide delegates with public transportation. The Port District is paying $10 million toward the trolley extension and the rest will come from the city, he said.

Responsibility to operate, maintain, manage and market the center rests with the San Diego Convention Center Corp., a nonprofit group formed by the City Council in 1985. The corporation also has a healthy reserve, expected to reach about $11 million by the time the center opens.

The money comes from a special room tax levied on the two towers of the Marriott Hotel next door to the center, and which, in the future, will also be applied to the Hyatt Regency that is expected to be built nearby. The tax revenue is placed in a special convention center fund that will be used to help operate the convention center and pay for future capital costs, such as an expected expansion.

Operating Losses

Of critical importance is that the tax money will cover the center’s continuing gross operating losses, expected to range from about $4 million to $6 million annually at least through 1995. By relying on this special room tax, it is projected that the center’s net operating losses will be wiped out three years after opening.

So what will the convention center look like? In a word, massive. The main exhibit floor will encompass 254,000 square feet, big enough for seven football fields. Part of the roof will contain a 100,000-square-foot open-air patio covered by $6 million worth of sail-like Teflon-coated tents, a space that, given the city’s temperate climate, could give the center its San Diego-only stamp of recognition.

There will be another 100,000 square feet spread over 32 meeting rooms, a 40,000-square-foot ballroom, six rooftop tennis courts, 32 truck docks, underground parking for 2,000 cars and facilities to seat as many as 6,000 people at a single banquet. A bayside amphitheater will handle 400 people.

Out front along Harbor Drive, a series of 25 dramatic fins will rise 110 feet from the ground. Below them, the main building, with 66 front doors, will stand 80 feet from the pavement. Curved green-tinted glass will link the fins.

Some have criticized the center as looming too large over the waterfront, blocking views and access to the bay. The center’s supporters counter that the facility will actually provide more public access to the bay by providing waterfront terraces and plazas. They note that there was little opportunity for public access when the land was fallow.

Billy Crockett, project manager for Fluor Constructors, the firm hired for $2.4 million to oversee construction of the center, says the project is slightly more than half done. The contractor, a partnership of Tutor-Saliba/Perini Corp., was supposed to have finished the structure in mid-May of next year.

That schedule, however, has slipped several months, in part because of delays in receiving structural steel from Korea and problems with foundation work. The new completion date is mid-September of 1989. It will then take a few months to break in the facility before the first major convention, probably in January of 1990.

Extremely Complex Job

“This is an extremely complex concrete job. . . . The architectural concrete is a monster,” said Crockett, describing the challenge of getting the concrete to look good. The building’s look will consist of concrete sand-blasted to a light-colored finish. So far, about 78,000 cubic yards of concrete have been poured, with another 47,000 cubic yards to go.

Once the center is open, the emphasis will be on keeping it busy. That’s where the Convention Center Corp. and the Convention & Visitors Bureau come in. The overriding priority guiding the operation of the center is that top consideration be given to the booking of large conventions and trade shows, the kind that bring several thousand out-of-town visitors to the city’s hotels and restaurants.

As a practical matter, that means ConVis is in charge of handling bookings more than 18 months in advance. The priority is to fill hotel rooms, said Sandra Butler, ConVis vice president in charge of sales. So far, ConVis has received confirmation from 23 conventions, surpassing the projected first-year booking estimate of 15 conventions, though none has signed a contract.

Second on the center’s priority booking list are regional-type consumer shows, which will be scheduled by the Convention Center Corp. only within an 18-month time frame. These kinds of shows are expected to draw attendance mainly from the 4 million people living in the greater San Diego-Tijuana region, said Tom F. Liegler, Convention Center Corp. executive vice president and general manager

Last is the use of the convention center for purely local events--cultural, education and religious.

That poses a challenge for Liegler, former manager of the Anaheim Convention Center, and his staff: how do you make a facility, with a priority of attracting out-of-town visitors, enticing enough to attract local residents.

Local Shows to Shrink

“We want to bring in events that lead to a well-balanced community life,” said Liegler, explaining that local people must have an affinity for the center if it is to emerge as a focal point for San Diegans.

If the center is as successful as its supporters project, it’s clear that number of public consumer shows will shrink as the number of large conventions increases, a prospect not lost on Carroll R. Armstrong, the center’s director of marketing.

“We’re ensuring that there will be a mix of business that will allow for local participation,” he said. But he says that, in a few years, once the center is in full operation, “the number of public shows will decrease to five or six a year” because many large conventions and trade shows intended for outsiders will get priority.

Armstrong speaks from experience. He previously has worked in management at the New Orleans Convention Center, the Baltimore Convention Bureau and the Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau. In New Orleans and Washington, he said, the convention centers became such a magnet for out-of-town conventions and trade shows that shows intended primarily for local audiences were gradually squeezed out.

Regardless of what group is using the San Diego center, Liegler says, the city will try to set itself apart from the competition by providing high-quality food and service. To that end, the Convention Center Corp. is in the midst of preparing two of its major contracts, one for food and beverage service and the other for the design of a telecommunications system. These two contracts, part of an estimated 18 separate contracts with outside vendors and subcontractors, are expected to be major revenue producers for the center.

The food and beverage contract with Premier Food is in the final stages of completion. While the final dollars and cents are still being negotiated, the idea behind the service is not. Unlike the traditional banquet service common to convention centers, where platoons of waiters scurry around serving individual plates of food, where the portions have been doled out in an unseen kitchen, the San Diego center will use the “epicurean service,” in Liegler’s words.

In what can best be described as individualized mass feeding, this service involves bringing food out in large trays and having waiters serve guests at a table individually. For example, soup would be brought out of the kitchen in a large tureen, to be served into individual bowls at the table. The same principle would apply for entrees.

The point of all this, says Armstrong, is to provide that extra touch that improves the quality of both the center’s food and the service. “It’s the difference between a Chevrolet and a Mercedes,” Armstrong said.

Credibility Gap

The idea of trying to separate San Diego from the crowd can’t be underestimated because, until recently, the city has had to made amends for a credibility gap caused by the controversy which has in the last two decades dogged the convention center.

“For a while they (the convention and trade show industry) didn’t believe anyone in the community . . . we had lost a lot of credibility,” said Butler, the ConVis official.

The convention and trade show business is a relatively tightly knit community and word of San Diego’s continual problems spread quickly.

“There was a point when they stopped construction and just had a big hole in the ground,” said Donald J. Walter, executive director of National Assn. of Exposition Managers, an Aurora, Ohio-based group whose membership includes 1,600 exposition managers.

“But now I’d say that lack of credibility doesn’t exist. The city has been promoting the center heavily; it’s under construction and people can see it taking shape,” he said. “People are recognizing they are in and part of the game now. They’ll be a factor.”

Liegler says his staff has worked to dispel the image that San Diego was lagging. But nothing works as well as taking potential customers to the window of his 12th-floor office in the Central Savings building and showing them the center actually coming to life amid the hundreds of workers, cranes, steel and concrete walls. “That,” he says, “is the best proof.”

Total Exhibit Space at Centers in Nation’s 10 Largest Cities

San Diego is the only community among the nation’s 10 largest cities without a convention center. Listed here is the total exhibit space of convention centers in those cities, as well as the one under construction in San Diego:

New York City: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 900,000 square feet of total exhibit space.

Los Angeles: Los Angeles Convention Center, 234,000 square feet. By 1992 it will be expanded 350,000 square feet, a two-story conference center will be built, meeting rooms will be tripled and parking space for 3,200 more cars will be created.

Chicago: McCormick Place, 1.6 million square feet.

Houston: Astrodome-Astrohall Stadium Corp., 910,000 square feet. To be expanded 135,000 square feet in 1990.

Philadelphia: Philadelphia Civic Center, 272,000 square feet. The City Council is considering a proposal to construct the Pennsylvania Convention Center. If approved, the 450,000-square-foot facility would be ready in 1991.

Detroit: Cobo Hall, 400,000 square feet. To be expanded 300,000 square feet in 1989.

San Diego (still unfinished): San Diego Convention Center, 354,000 square feet.

Dallas: Dallas Convention Center, 671,335 square feet. To be expanded 300,000 square feet in 1992-93.

San Antonio: Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, 240,000 square feet.

Phoenix: Phoenix Civic Plaza, 223,000 square feet.