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  When San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye stepped inside the newly expanded San Diego Convention Center, she gazed into the cavernous space before her and murmured, “I wish I had my skateboard.” Her reaction is hardly unusual — “big” is the operative word. Together, the new and the original sections of the convention center extend nearly half a mile, forming a single 2.6 million-square-foot colossus on the bay. The $216 million expansion, which officially opens Sept. 14, adds a ground floor hall equal to six football fields, doubling the center’s total exhibit space. It adds a 40,000-square-foot ballroom, decorated with veneer panels that, despite the huge expanse of walls, come from a single eucalyptus tree. Its upper level adds 40 meeting rooms to the 32 in the existing section. Its lobbies and foyers stretch endlessly, the wavy design of its carpets reflecting the blue-green colors of the sea. Ceilings soar, and rings of curving barrel-vaulted glass admit the sky and offer sweeping views of the Centre City. On the waterfront, terraces overlook San Diego Bay. “It’s gorgeous,” says Frye. “It really gives you a sense of openness.” So vast is its space that it comes as a surprise to learn that this center is not the biggest in the country, or even on the West Coast. The convention centers in San Francisco, Anaheim and Los Angeles are all bigger as well as those in 16 other American cities, convention center statistics reveal. There is no end in sight to the bigger-is-better convention center construction boom going on across the country. But San Diego officials are betting that — at least for now — San Diego’s center on the bay will keep this city competitive with its bigger rivals. The expansion, coupled with the 90,000-square-foot Sails Pavilion now enclosed behind a glass curtain, has given the San Diego Convention Center 615,000 square feet of exhibit space. “We’re over the half a million (square feet) threshold that allows us to attract some of the largest conventions and meetings that we previously could not entertain here,” says Patrick Shea, the San Diego attorney who chairs the board of the San Diego Convention Center Corp. Obstruction And Delay
At that time, few anticipated that enlarging a successful center almost would be as time-consuming as getting the first part developed. After all, the team of Arthur Erickson Associates, Deems, Lewis & Partners and Loschky, Marquandt & Nesholm had delivered a building design with distinctive sails that had become an instant landmark on the waterfront and a favorite with conventioneers. The center was rightfully credited with helping to revitalize Downtown. “The biggest plus of the convention center in general is that it is its own economic engine for San Diego,” Shea says. In its first five years alone, more than 3 million people attended roughly 1,000 events at the center, creating a $1.5 billion impact for the region. By its 10th anniversary, the center’s regional economic impact was placed at nearly $4 billion. “This is a terrific industry for San Diego,” Shea says. “And this convention center has done everything it was touted to do and more.” Despite the center’s promising early track record and warnings that some major conventions would soon outgrow the local space, San Diego city and convention officials discovered that building an 864,000-square-foot expansion would be no cake walk. Then Mayor Susan Golding urged city officials to put the project on the fast track. But they were frustrated by a mountain of obstacles — from financial and design questions to litigation. The city of San Diego, owner and developer of the convention center expansion, faced criticism early on that extending the original building straight along the waterfront would wall off harbor views and public access. “This was a challenge as it was a requirement that the new convention facility be built adjacent to the existing facility in order to provide the much-needed extra exhibit space,” says Arturo Castro, president of Sadler Noble Castro Architects, which, along with HNTB architects, designed the center’s expansion. At the insistence of convention center officials, the expansion had to extend the center straight along Harbor Drive, creating a solid structure between First and Eighth avenues and a main exhibit space seamlessly connecting the original with its addition. To develop an expansion that would work both functionally and aesthetically, the City Council selected a design-build team in 1994: Centex Golden Construction Co., Turner Construction, Tucker, Sadler & Associates and HNTB Corp. The design eventually approved sought to keep its exterior from looking overly monolithic. The architecture of the expansion complemented the sails, skylights and buttresses of the older section but did not precisely duplicate it. Features were added to improve views and access to the waterfront. The architectural team designed a Grand Staircase from the Harbor Drive sidewalk over the center’s midsection to a promenade and observation rotunda between the existing and new sections of the center. An inclined elevator was installed alongside the stairs. The south end of the expansion was angled to help preserve views from Sixth Avenue. In the plaza directly across, a row of free-standing concrete buttresses was added. It mimicked the buttresses of the existing center but was left disconnected from the building for a see-through effect. While the City Council worked out design issues, it also began hammering out details of a financial plan for the expansion, initially projected to cost $140 million — $76 million lower than the ultimate price. Under a 1994 joint agreement, the San Diego Unified Port District would provide 11 acres south of the existing center, with the city and the port agreeing to share the costs of debt service on the lease revenue bonds. San Diego Councilman Byron Wear, whose District 2 includes the convention center site, says the investment was a good one for the city, especially since the center already was bringing in millions more in hotel room or transient occupancy taxes. Conventions and tourism are producing “good clean dollars going into our economy” that help the city balance its budget and pay for services, he says. In 1994, the City Council boosted room taxes 1.5 cents per dollar, earmarking a portion of the 10.5 cent levy for the convention center expansion. But not everyone thought public money should pay for the expansion project. Critics argued that hotels benefited while taxpayers wound up paying for the center’s operating deficits. In May 1996, tax activists challenged the finance plan in court. The litigation dragged on, dooming the possibility of finishing the expansion in time for the January 1998 Super Bowl in San Diego. In 1998, the final barriers fell. A 62 percent majority of San Diego voters approved the convention center expansion proposal, and the California Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the city-port financing plan and the use of a joint powers authority to issue bonds. The victory cleared the path for construction, but the delays took a toll on business. Between 1999 and 2002, roughly 49 convention and trade shows had to be canceled, reflecting a loss of $288 million in direct delegate spending and $12.3 million in hotel-motel taxes. Once the expansion was under way, the work proceeded relatively smoothly. Carol Wallace’s Team Wallace, president and chief executive of the San Diego Convention Center Corp., created a new management team. She recruited Joseph Psuik as her convention center director. She had worked with him previously on a convention center construction project in Colorado. She then persuaded Rudolph Johnson III, formerly assistant project manager for the city, to come to work for her as convention center assistant director. Meanwhile, Ron Rudolph, director of Turner Construction’s San Diego operations and project executive for the expansion, oversaw the design-build process that incorporated architects and builders into a single team. “As the convention center expansion began the design-build project, all of the players involved convened in a retreat-style, open-communication session to pull everyone together on the same page,” says Rudolph. But he also had to be sensitive to the external impact of the work, including the neighborhood disruptions caused by the lengthy construction project and a one-year closure of a section of Harbor Drive. He recalls how his staff would meet occasionally at the Chart House Restaurant, a business that was suffering through construction on the harbor side of the expansion site. “We tried to be good neighbors,” he says. With the expansion completed and the dust settled, convention center officials had to cope with one more challenge: the timing of the expansion opening. For example, when planning began, only those with an accurate crystal ball could have predicted that the effort would start operating in the midst of an energy crisis. In an expansion with 10,395 light fixtures and state-of-the-art telecommunications, Rudolph says it cost $75,000 a month just to test the utility systems.
More important, the expansion is opening well before construction of a headquarters hotel to anchor its south end. Convention officials believe that inn will be essential to maximizing the benefits of the expanded center. The Marriott and Hyatt hotels just north of the existing center offer 2,229 rooms. The Hyatt this summer started work on a 750-room addition. Smaller hotels are in the works. The proposed Spinnaker Hotel would offer another 250 rooms close to the center, and the ballpark development across from the expansion plans at least two in the 200- to 300-room range. A new Hilton hotel recently opened in the Gaslamp Quarter across from the convention center. Nevertheless, center officials say the Hyatt addition and the smaller hotels that will operate a stone’s throw from the convention center are no substitutes for a headquarters hotel with its meeting and banquet facilities and no less than 1,200 rooms — a hotel that would appeal to the organizations that bring in the delegates who stay the longest and spend the most. Wallace says the proposed headquarters hotel could be built either on the new ballpark hotel site or on the Campbell Shipyard site by 2004. The port is searching for hotel development proposals for the shipyard space. Meanwhile, San Diego’s convention center may continue to miss out. More Rooms, Please Between May 2000 and April 2001, the center lost 21 convention and trade shows — and $109 million in direct delegate spending — because of a lack of suitable hotel rooms. Similarly, 20 to 25 conventions could slip away until the headquarters hotel is finally built, say convention officials. “The city of San Diego has half a billion dollars of bonds on the convention center,” says board Chairman Shea. “We’re not doing our job unless we create the facilities to optimize its use.” Even without the headquarters hotel, San Diego remains quite popular. If conventions don’t come here, it is mostly because they cannot squeeze their shows into the exhibit space — or can’t find enough hotel rooms for their delegates. “We are still competing because we are such a strong visitor destination,” says Wallace, adding that conventions held in San Diego often report record attendance. San Diego’s popularity was reaffirmed, she says, when she attended a meeting of the American Society of Association Executives, a key group of professionals who book conventions. The society held its annual convention in San Diego in 1999 and last year announced the cities that would host its general sessions in the future. The room was quiet, says Wallace, until it was announced the association would meet in San Diego in 2008. “The whole room cheered,” she recalls. For Wallace, the problem is not so much attracting conventions — bookings for the expanded space already extend to 2019. Rather, the challenge is trying to ensure that the facilities — the hotels and the expanding exhibit space — are ready when promised for major organizations that book their conventions years in advance. In the game of winning commitments from the top meetings and shows, she’s prepared to employ the full gamut of existing and proposed Downtown facilities — the convention center, Golden Hall on the Concourse, the proposed ballpark (despite its stalled construction) and the soon-to-be-renovated Balboa Theatre. She already is looking ahead to the next expansion. “We need to set aside land now so that 10 years down the road, when we’re ready to build Phase 3, we’ll have land already,” she says. “Otherwise, we’ll be landlocking ourselves.” Councilman Wear, who supports her vision, says the City Council should raise the hotel room taxes and again earmark a portion of the increase to fund that effort. Meanwhile, Wallace talks of the possibility of building a beautiful convention center structure over the railroad yard and tracks near the existing center. She views it both as critical to the future of the convention center — and to the Downtown revitalization effort. “What better way,” she asks, “to hide that eyesore?”
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Getting the first part of the center built was a struggle. In 1981, voters turned down one proposal to construct a convention center in the Columbia District of Downtown. Two years later, a plan to have the San Diego Unified Port District build one on the Downtown waterfront won voter approval. Discussions on expansion started even before the original San Diego Convention Center opened on Harbor Drive in 1989. They began in earnest shortly after Carol Wallace was hired to manage the meeting hall in late 1991.