Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Heywood does more convention center math

More numbers to show more convention space is not needed!

San Diego Convention Center
San Diego Convention Center

Heywood Sanders, professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, and the nation's ranking expert on convention centers, just visited San Diego. He is the author of the book Convention Center Follies, telling how convention centers are massively overbuilt and prices are plunging. (San Diego is cutting prices by 50 percent, as are other centers.)

Heywood Sanders

For years, Sanders has been quoted in the Reader, challenging the San Diego Convention Center's published numbers and pointing out the follies of expansion — both in San Diego and elsewhere.

Sponsored
Sponsored

While he was here, he walked to the location that is now being tossed around as a possible combined convention center/domed football stadium, on land owned by John Moores. Sanders says that combined centers/stadiums don't work well.

"A stadium is not great convention center space. You only have about 150,000 square feet on the floor — pretty small."

If San Diego went ahead with such a project, "You would have two separate convention centers," says Sanders. Experience has shown that people attending one convention won't walk a long distance to get to the second one, and in this case, as Sanders found out, one goes over a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Drive, and then walks several blocks to the new location. There would have to be one convention in the new location, and another in the current one.

So, now the question becomes: would San Diego be able to sell out two centers? It's extremely doubtful. San Diego's numbers are pushed by Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. The latter should probably not be classified as a convention, because the attendees are mostly from the San Diego area. The former is questionable, too. Many Comic-Con attendees are from San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties, and go home in the evening, thus not filling hotels or even restaurants. And there is controversy about how much Comic-Con attendees spend in restaurants and hotels. A lot of them are brown-baggers.

Here's a shocker: "It's not clear that, aside from the growth of Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, the center is doing better than it was in the late 1990s before the expansion," says Sanders. The expected attendance this year is 546,628. If you subtract Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, the number is attendance of 356,628. The center was expanded in 2001. So, go back to 1998 and 1999. Without Comic-Con and Rock 'n' Roll, attendance in 1998 was 287,947. In 1999, without Comic-Con and the marathon, it was 320,034. So, attendance has hardly grown impressively in more than a decade and a half.

Here's another shocker: In 2008, attendance was 478,159 without Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. Thus, the convention center has lost business since 2008, during the Great Recession.

It will be extremely difficult for any expansion — particularly one blocks away — to pay off.

San Diego gave John Moores land in the ballpark district for extremely low (early 1990s) prices. He raked in an estimated $700 million to $1 billion selling that land to developers. That's apart from the $300 million subsidy for the ballpark. Then San Diego put public projects, such as the library, near Moores's buildings so he could feast off infrastructure that he was paying little or nothing for, says former councilmember Bruce Henderson. Now some San Diegans want to buy land from Moores's company for a combined stadium-convention center that would probably be a white elephant.

"It's corporate welfare on steroids," says Henderson.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

20 Best Online Casinos USA For Real Money (2024 List)

USA Online Casinos: Top 20 Online Casino Sites of 2024
Next Article

Flowering pear trees in Kensington not that nice

Empty dirt plots in front of Ken Cinema
San Diego Convention Center
San Diego Convention Center

Heywood Sanders, professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, and the nation's ranking expert on convention centers, just visited San Diego. He is the author of the book Convention Center Follies, telling how convention centers are massively overbuilt and prices are plunging. (San Diego is cutting prices by 50 percent, as are other centers.)

Heywood Sanders

For years, Sanders has been quoted in the Reader, challenging the San Diego Convention Center's published numbers and pointing out the follies of expansion — both in San Diego and elsewhere.

Sponsored
Sponsored

While he was here, he walked to the location that is now being tossed around as a possible combined convention center/domed football stadium, on land owned by John Moores. Sanders says that combined centers/stadiums don't work well.

"A stadium is not great convention center space. You only have about 150,000 square feet on the floor — pretty small."

If San Diego went ahead with such a project, "You would have two separate convention centers," says Sanders. Experience has shown that people attending one convention won't walk a long distance to get to the second one, and in this case, as Sanders found out, one goes over a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Drive, and then walks several blocks to the new location. There would have to be one convention in the new location, and another in the current one.

So, now the question becomes: would San Diego be able to sell out two centers? It's extremely doubtful. San Diego's numbers are pushed by Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. The latter should probably not be classified as a convention, because the attendees are mostly from the San Diego area. The former is questionable, too. Many Comic-Con attendees are from San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties, and go home in the evening, thus not filling hotels or even restaurants. And there is controversy about how much Comic-Con attendees spend in restaurants and hotels. A lot of them are brown-baggers.

Here's a shocker: "It's not clear that, aside from the growth of Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, the center is doing better than it was in the late 1990s before the expansion," says Sanders. The expected attendance this year is 546,628. If you subtract Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, the number is attendance of 356,628. The center was expanded in 2001. So, go back to 1998 and 1999. Without Comic-Con and Rock 'n' Roll, attendance in 1998 was 287,947. In 1999, without Comic-Con and the marathon, it was 320,034. So, attendance has hardly grown impressively in more than a decade and a half.

Here's another shocker: In 2008, attendance was 478,159 without Comic-Con and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. Thus, the convention center has lost business since 2008, during the Great Recession.

It will be extremely difficult for any expansion — particularly one blocks away — to pay off.

San Diego gave John Moores land in the ballpark district for extremely low (early 1990s) prices. He raked in an estimated $700 million to $1 billion selling that land to developers. That's apart from the $300 million subsidy for the ballpark. Then San Diego put public projects, such as the library, near Moores's buildings so he could feast off infrastructure that he was paying little or nothing for, says former councilmember Bruce Henderson. Now some San Diegans want to buy land from Moores's company for a combined stadium-convention center that would probably be a white elephant.

"It's corporate welfare on steroids," says Henderson.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Nation’s sexy soldiers stage protest at Pendleton in wake of change in Marine uniform policy

Semper WHY?
Next Article

Flowering pear trees in Kensington not that nice

Empty dirt plots in front of Ken Cinema
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.