It’s the fault of politicians who, over and over, try to bypass the voter approval of such deals — approval that IS required by the California constitution and our city charter. Such a deal should have been brought to the voters three years ago. It was not, and it wasn’t “the naysayers” who chose to violate the constitution.
The driving force behind expanding (again) the convention center was the colorful “Comic-Con” convention. Theoretically it may have to move to a larger venue to accommodate the crushing, costumed crowd (or raise prices — gee, I wonder if anyone has thought of that?).
But while the NUMBER of attendees is huge, the economic benefit to the city is unimpressive relative to the cost of the convention center expansion. These young folks are largely “day trippers” from all over southern California. They eat at Subway and often don’t rent expensive hotel rooms.
Fortunately the NEW YORK TIMES just did a story on Comic-Con, comparing its local economic impact vs. other San Diego conventions. Local commenter Chris Brewster best summarized the article:
The underlying question, in my view, is whether expanding the convention center is of value to the community in the first place, which has been a mantra of the hospitality community. I think we’ve been sold a bill of goods on that question. Comic Con and the potential exit thereof is constantly trumpeted as a huge reason to expand, but the New York Times recently reported that Comic Con attendees “spend little” and that this convention of cheapos far outstrips the COMBINED TOTAL of its next four largest conventions hosted at the convention center. Sure, if you’re a hotel owner, any new potential guest base attracted by an edifice paid for by someone else is a good thing, but from a community perspective, the cost/benefit does not seem to be there . . .
Comic-Con is a unique happening. To pull it off, it must be within commuting range of a huge populace. Currently it draws mostly young “locals” from the 25 million people that live in Southern California. There are not too many places that could provide that populous a base combined with a huge convention center. Maybe Los Angeles.
But the main competitor would be Las Vegas, where the combined convention capacity is unsurpassed. Unfortunately for Comic-Con, Las Vegas has less than 2 million people within commuting distance — compared to 25 million in Southern California. The convention would lose many of their current decked out attendees.
Besides who would want to wear such elaborate costumes in summer’s 100+ degree heat of Las Vegas? San Diego’s mild coastal summer weather is an advantage that Comic-Con should carefully consider before moving elsewhere.
Comments 9
yep
thanks RR
You make a good point about the vote. I’m not persuaded about the economics by the NYT article. It’s not a real focused article and relies on a lot of anecdotes about attendees being cheap and not much data. The article did link to a Convention Center official projection for 2014 but that projection didn’t compare the Comic-Con income to income in July when the convention isn’t here. I did some online research to see how much TOT revenue San Diego gets per week in July to compare that average to the week in July that Comic-Con is here. I couldn’t find any report that makes that comparison. Does anybody know?
I think Vegas is a viable alternative. Plenty of LA and San Diego kids would road trip there.
Wanna hear an inconvenient fact? NASCAR has a greater economic impact than a Superbowl does. I’m guessing, if we did some research, we’ll learn that a convention of some arcane group, like bookbinders or candlestick makers has a greater impact than Comic-Con.
Author
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Comic-Con. It’s a HAPPENING, as we used to say. There’s no other convention like it in San Diego. It’s fun!
But, GIVEN THE COST OF THE CONVENTION CENTER EXPANSION, it’s not worth the taxpayer outlay. And even if we DID expand the con center, that’s no guarantee Comic-Con wouldn’t move anyway.
Some DO profit mightily from con center subsidies — mostly national hotel chains. If the price of the rooms go up for a “full house” downtown, that extra revenue flows mostly to the hotels’ bottom lines — we get only the increase in TOT revenue. And remember, we should count only the NET increase in revenue from Comic-Con, as we have a booming tourist trade here already.
Yes, our economy benefits, but apparently much more from several other current conventions that come here.
It is a cultural happening and it does liven up downtown San Diego for a week. You make a good point about there being no guarantee that Comic-Con would stick around, Richard. I actually don’t much like Comic-Con anymore. I went a bunch of times when I used to do panel presentations on human space exploration. Doing panels with sci-fi authors and space scientists was fun. And some of the Hollywood events were cool. But the convention itself gets old after a while. I digress. Anyway, one of the convention center reports I found online touts medical conferences as being big money makers per capita. Doctors, money. Makes sense to me. I still haven’t been able to find the net increase in revenue from Comic-Con online. That’s what I was trying to do by looking for data for past Julys. It’s got to be available somewhere but I’m not finding it online.
Solution: Put a 5% Replacement Hotel Room TOT on November 4, 2014 ballot. August 8, 2014 is last day for City Clerk to turn in Ballot Information to the Country Registrar of Voters, and the City Council is schedule for Thursday August 7, 2014. Problem solved.
The only solution for Online Travel Agencies (OTA) discounted TOT Rate is a legal public vote.
http://tinyurl.com/20140531a
Propose Solutions 5% Replacement TOT
=3% Infrastructure Convention Center
+ 1% Homeless Housing Trust fund
+ 1% Arts/Neighborhood
Minimum $10 million or 1% of existing 10.5% TOT.
If only we had leadership. For some unknown reason Mayor Kevin Faulconer and City Council President Todd Gloria want to wait until 2016. Leaving hundred of million in cash on table since 2012, at the request of private mostly out of state Hoteliers.
July 28, 2014 California Supreme Court grants review of San Diego fight for bed tax collections from on-line resellers of hotel stays. Big money at stake for CA cities!
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/ws072814.pdf
#14-90 In re Transient Occupancy Tax Cases, S218400. (B243800; 225 Cal.App.4th 56; Los Angeles County Superior Court; JCCP 4472.) Petition for review after the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in action for writ of administrative mandate. This case includes the following issue: When a customer books a hotel room through an online travel company, should the occupancy tax levied on the rent charged by the hotel be calculated based on the retail rate paid by the customer to obtain the right to use the room or on the wholesale amount that the hotel receives from the online travel company after that company has deducted its markup and fees?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/business/media/large-crowds-spend-little-at-comic-con.html?
One thing that has been lost in the discussion of this ruling is the fact that Bob Filner was correct and the City could have saved itself unnecessary legal fees and wasted time had his advice been taken.