Bulldozer Parade : Convention Center Expansion Gets Roaring Send-Off

A parade of giant bulldozers carrying hard-hat-clad dignitaries, including Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, made for a roaring ground-breaking Monday as the Los Angeles Convention Center began undergoing a $390-million expansion that will make it one of the largest such facilities in the nation.

“A few shovels of dirt didn’t seem right,” said Dick Walsh, general manager of the downtown center after a bulldozer scooped up a huge bite of earth.

The long-planned expansion of the city-owned and -operated facility is the second-largest redevelopment project ever undertaken by the Community Redevelopment Agency, ranking behind only the downtown Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project of the 1960s, CRA officials said.

The project will nearly double the size of the center from 1.5 million to 2.5 million square feet over 35 acres of land bounded by Pico Boulevard, Figueroa Street, Venice Boulevard and the Santa Monica and Harbor freeways.

The expansion has involved the relocation of 408 families and the demolition of an entire neighborhood of mainly run-down apartments and commercial buildings.

A five-acre open plaza, a two-story conference center spanning a block of Pico Boulevard, and two 150-foot glass pavilions reinforced with structural steel tubes will be included in the expanded center.

“When you see this tremendous facility in the heart of downtown L.A. you will stick your chest out with pride,” Bradley said after climbing down from the seat of a huge earthmover loaded on an 18-wheel flatbed truck.

For more than five years, the city has lost tens of millions of dollars in convention and trade show business because the downtown center is not big enough or modern enough to compete with new facilities in other major cities, including Dallas, New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and New Orleans, officials said.

These cities compete for large conventions because they attract visitors who spend dizzying amounts of money that fuel local economies and make the national trade show business a $12-billion-a-year industry, said Darlene Gudea, editor and publisher of Tradeshow Week, a convention and exhibitors trade publication.

“The expansion is critical for Los Angeles because the city has been losing a number of huge shows simply because it does not have the space,” Gudea said.

Los Angeles recently lost a men’s apparel convention that moved to Las Vegas, taking with it 48,000 participants who spent about $14 million over four days at hotels, restaurants and shops, she said.

When the Los Angeles expansion is completed in late 1992, the center will be the ninth largest in the country, and it is expected to generate $504 million annually for the local economy by 1994, officials said. The center will also bring 3,000 additional jobs to downtown Los Angeles.

The City Council approved the sale of $390 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance the expansion four years ago. In addition, the CRA spent $126 million, which was revenue generated through bond sales and property taxes on new downtown developments.

The agency bought the 35 acres and relocated 1,500 people and 68 businesses that occupied the aging apartments and other buildings at the site. Families who once lived in substandard conditions were given the opportunity to move to newer and cheaper housing.

Tough state relocation laws that protect tenants and the intervention of public-interest attorneys who negotiated on tenants’ behalf made for a surprisingly smooth transition that ended in late 1988, officials said at the time.

“The decision to go ahead with this was a bold one,” said CRA Chairman James M. Wood. “But the economic impact of this center will be enormous. And we had to do this if we wanted to compete with other cities.”

NEXT STEP Construction of the 2.5-million-square-foot expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center will begin in February, 1990. The massive project will include the construction of two 150-foot-high glass pavilions. Upon completion in late 1992 the center will be the ninth largest facility in the nation.