Cheryl Kendrick, chair of the Convention Center Corp., says the convention center needs to expand to meet the growing needs of key tenants.

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, 1983, San Diego voters approved Proposition A, giving the “green light” to one of San Diego’s largest municipal projects at the time – the construction of the bayside San Diego Convention Center. Since then, San Diego has become one of the world’s leading meeting destinations, driven largely by the award-winning Convention Center. For San Diego taxpayers, that’s good news, because events have generated $16.2 billion in regional economic benefits and $327 million in tax revenues for the city since the center opened in November 1989.

The center was an immediate success and in 2001, voters endorsed an expansion with a resounding 62 percent approval. The facility grew to include 525,701 square feet of exhibit space and 204,114 square feet of meeting space. Voters clearly understood how tax revenue generated by center events helps reduce the tax burden on them while funding essential city services such as police and fire protection, street repair, parks and community libraries.

Next year, the Convention Center celebrates its 20th anniversary. In that time, the building has hosted over 4,000 events and attracted nearly 14.5 million people through its doors. More than 6.8 million were out-of-town conventioneers who spent money in local restaurants, attractions, shops and, more importantly, used nearly 10 million hotel room nights in our city.

Questions And Answers About The
Proposed Convention Center Expansion

The Convention Center also supports nearly 12,500 jobs countywide. These jobs reflect a wide range of industries directly and indirectly supporting Convention Center events. Interestingly, not all of them are in the hospitality sector, but include areas such as agriculture and durable goods manufacturing.

Despite the current economic uncertainty, the Convention Center continues to deliver for taxpayers. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2008, the Convention Center set all-time performance records, generating $30.4 million in TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) revenue. The Convention Center hosted 234 events, which generated an unprecedented $1.8 billion in regional economic impact and drawing an all-time high 996,226 visitors, including 648,159 out-of-town visitors. Records were also set for direct spending by delegates in local hotels, restaurants and shops in the amount of $751.8 million.

In August, San Diego had the rare opportunity to host the American Society of Association Executives & The Center for Association Leadership, the largest association membership organization in the world. That gathering showcased our city as a premier meetings and convention destination to the executives attending the meeting, who are responsible for selecting locations for their own associations’ events. This prestigious event brought an immediate $31.2 million in economic impact. More importantly, it has the potential to bring more than $1 billion in future business to San Diego over the next five years.

Demand for meeting space and exhibit space in San Diego continues to be strong. One measure of success is our building occupancy, which has exceeded 70 percent the last two years. The Convention Center is at “practical maximum occupancy” range, an industry term indicating the building is maximizing all usable space. No facility ever reaches 100 percent occupancy due to brief closures for maintenance, holidays and the difficulty in booking back to-back events due to move-in and move-out schedules.

Success, however, often brings with it inherent challenges. A lack of available exhibit and meeting space has become the primary reason groups cannot hold their conventions in our building. So meeting planners book their business in other cities with larger convention centers and spend their dollars at their hotels, stores, restaurants and attractions instead of ours.

Mayor Jerry Sanders, a champion of the visitor industry, expressed how vital expansion of the Convention Center is to the city’s long-term prosperity in his 2008 State of the City address. The meetings and convention industry is highly competitive and other cities are working to take away our business. If we want to continue growing business – if we even want to maintain the business we presently have —and the resultant economic benefits to San Diego, we must expand the Convention Center.

Looking at Downtown today, with thriving businesses and exciting new developments, it’s easy to forget what our city was like 25 years ago, when it had fallen into disrepair and decay, the result of years of neglect. When the Convention Center opened its doors in 1989, a new era for San Diego began. Conventioneers flocked to San Diego, supporting pioneering Gaslamp Quarter restaurants and numerous small businesses. Convention attendees fueled the development of hotels along the waterfront, generating millions in revenues to the Port of San Diego, which makes our waterfront enjoyable for all. When San Diegans voted to build and expand the Convention Center, they ignited an urban renaissance, bringing unmitigated success to our city.

Promises made over two decades ago to San Diego taxpayers about the economic benefits and tax revenues generated by the Convention Center have been kept. Now our challenge is to build on this record of success by expanding this facility again so we can help secure our economic future and retain our competitive position in the convention and meeting market. By increasing the size of the Convention Center to meet our immediate needs, we can generate 5,000 permanent new jobs, drive more than $2.25 billion in annual economic impact and return $50 million in tax revenues annually to the city. And those numbers should make everyone happy.

Cheryl Kendrick is chair of the San Diego Convention Center Corp. board.