San Diego Center Aims for a Million

The San Diego Convention Center Corp. now has a year to work out the details of a planned expansion that would add 500,000 square feet of exhibit space to the city's convention center by 2014.

The SDCCC board of directors voted unanimously Sept. 26 to sign a one-year, $1 million lease with the option to buy 8.5 acres of land and water on the bay side of the convention center. The land is owned by the Port of San Diego, as is the convention center.

“There's already major support for the expansion,” said Carol Wallace, president and CEO of the SDCCC.

She added that the next year will be taken to do due diligence to determine expansion features, including what it will look like, how much it will cost and how it will be funded. If the SDCCC opts to move forward after the first year, the cost of the land will be $13.5 million.

“Many of our most lucrative clients who have outgrown the building, or are nearing capacity, have actually asked us when we plan to expand because they want to stay in San Diego,” Wallace said.

One of those lucrative clients is Comic-Con Intl., a comic book and popular arts show booked through 2012 that maxes out space at the convention center every year.

“The show has certainly grown exponentially over the past four years,” said David Glanzer, director of marketing and public relations for Comic-Con.

He added the show's most recent edition, July 25-27, attracted about 126,000 attendees and was sold out a couple of weeks before the event. “(An expansion) would give us much needed convention and meeting space,” Glanzer said.

More than 300 exhibitors are on Comic-Con's waiting list, he added.

“I think if there is no expansion, it's going to be really, really difficult for us to stay here,” Glanzer said.

Wallace said the expansion would help retain existing clients, as well as attract ones that previously wouldn't fit in the convention center, which currently has about 616,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space.

The expansion also would put the San Diego CC in its own league on the West Coast, with more than 1 million sq. ft. of exhibit space.

Anaheim Convention Center officials currently are discussing options for their own convention center expansion, hoping to retain clients like The NAMM Show, which is using every possible inch of the center. It hasn't been determined how much exhibit space would be added to Anaheim CC's existing 813,607 sq. ft.

Gaylord Entertainment also has discussed a West Coast convention center – a Gaylord Resort & Convention Center in Chula Vista, Calif., just south of San Diego on land that's also owned by the Port of San Diego. According to Gaylord officials, the property would include 400,000 sq. ft. of exhibit and meeting space and a 1,500-room hotel.

Wallace said the proposed San Diego CC expansion puts the convention center in a different market than the one Gaylord would pursue.

“We really complement each other,” she added. Plus, Wallace said, the San Diego CC has niches it has developed, including local business like Comic-Con and health care meetings.

The organizer of one of those meetings, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting's Pat Whitaker, said she was glad to hear about the possibility of San Diego CC expanding. The AAOS Annual Meeting was held in San Diego in 2007 and is scheduled there again in 2011.

“We'd welcome the additional space,” Whitaker said. In 2007, the show sold out the exhibit floor. “The meeting space would be helpful, too,” she added.

“Without question, this signature building is one of our city's greatest assets and investments made by local taxpayers,” San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said.

Wallace said the SDCCC generated $1.8 billion in regional economic impact and $31.9 million in tax revenues for the city in fiscal 2008.