Council Names S.D. Convention Center for King

The City Council, hoping to end years of racially divisive conflict over the question of a suitable civic tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., voted Tuesday to add the slain civil rights leader’s full name to the title of the San Diego Convention Center.

The council’s 7-2 vote sends the matter to the seven-member Board of Port Commissioners, which is building the $160-million bay-front convention center and must also approve any name change. The decision came despite strong warnings from Mayor Maureen O’Connor that the commissioners are not happy with the proposed title.

O’Connor, who met with the commissioners immediately before the council session, said a majority of them may vote against the tribute in the belief that a midstream name change will hamper national and international marketing efforts.

Hoping for Compromise

Hoping to fashion a compromise, O’Connor, an advocate of the tribute to King, proposed that the facility continue to be marketed as the San Diego Convention Center after King’s name is added to the title.

But, with Councilwoman Judy McCarty switching sides to provide a crucial fifth vote, the council voted 5 to 4 to market the facility under its proposed new name:

San Diego Martin Luther King Convention Center.

“I just can’t imagine naming the convention center something and then not marketing it under that name,” McCarty said. “It’s almost as if you’re ashamed of it and you don’t want the rest of the world to know.”

O’Connor predicted a tough road for the proposal. “I’m not holding out much hope, and that’s what I was trying to tell everybody,” she said. “I voted for what I thought had the hope of getting through the port commission.”

At least one commissioner, Raymond Burk of Coronado, has said publicly that he will vote against the name change. “I will vote against naming the convention center for Dr. King, not because I do not honor Dr. King, but because I believe it is inappropriate,” he said Monday night.

Burk said he believes that King’s name should be added to an edifice that has no title, such as the proposed new civic center complex.

The two votes ended the council’s role in one of the city’s most politically and racially charged issues of recent years. After considering several proposals, the council in 1986 voted to rename Market Street in honor of King, choosing the title Martin Luther King Way. But voters overwhelmingly rejected the tribute in a 1987 referendum that followed a racially polarized campaign led by Market Street merchants, and the downtown thoroughfare’s original name was reinstated.

Although the city has an elementary school and a park named for King in its largely black Southeast section, black leaders have lobbied ever since the referendum for a more visible tribute to King, who was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. in 1968.

After taking seven months of testimony from the public, a committee appointed by the city recommended adding King’s name to the convention center title despite members’ previous vow not to rename any existing facility.

Given its current name in a 1985 agreement between the city and the San Diego Unified Port District, the convention center is under construction and will not open until this fall.

The council votes were major victories for Wes Pratt, the council’s lone black member, who has led the tribute effort and lobbied his colleagues intensely. Pratt, who last month offered the compromise title “San Diego King Convention Center”--and suffered Councilman Bruce Henderson’s embarrassing public question of whether the proposal was a “bow to racism”--Tuesday suggested adding King’s full name as it became apparent that he might have four other votes of support.

In fact, he had six. Only McCarty, who favored Pratt’s original proposal, and Councilman Ed Struiksma voted against Pratt’s suggestion. Struiksma did not explain his reasons.

“I met Dr. King more than 30 years ago,” said Councilman Bob Filner, who participated in the 1961 “freedom rides” to abolish racial segregation in Mississippi. “I marched with Dr. King, sang with Dr. King, went to jail with Dr. King, and I was inspired to get into public life by Dr. King.”

The second vote was closer, with Council Members Ron Roberts, Gloria McColl and Struiksma joining O’Connor in favor of marketing the convention center under its current name. Roberts, who joined O’Connor at Tuesday’s swearing-in of Port District Chairman Louis Wolfsheimer, also said he sought a compromise in the hope of winning the commission’s support for a name change.

Meeting just six days before King’s 60th birthday, the council bucked pressure from constituents who wrote and telephoned overwhelming opposition to the name change.

“I believe the citizens of the city of San Diego don’t want to have this community plastered with memorials, testimonials, statues at public expense to the name of Dr. Martin Luther King,” Brockway Clark, a city resident, told the council Tuesday.

Several speakers threatened the council with another referendum on the tribute, an effort that could prove embarrassing as the city books conventions into its new facility. But, at this point, there does not appear to be the kind of organized opposition that sprang up along Market Street when its name was changed.

“We cannot, as elected officials, fail to act by the fact that someone is going to threaten to take our decision to the people,” Pratt said.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, however, supporters of the tribute outnumbered opponents, and they took pains to rebut the argument, made in September by the convention center’s staff, that the lengthy new name would be difficult to market.

Citing the city’s beaches, restaurants and tourist attractions, black leader Michel Anderson told the council: “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t market the name. . . . It will be a world-class convention center and it will be successful no matter what you name it.”

The name-change issue has been considered particularly sensitive for Council Members Abbe Wolfsheimer, McColl, Struiksma and McCarty, who must run in the city’s first district-only election this fall. One council aide, who insisted on anonymity, told of receiving a telephoned reminder Tuesday that King supporters “don’t elect your boss anymore.”

Along with the name change, the council approved the installation of a bust of King and a display of his contributions to American society at the convention center.