When you ask people in the hospitality industry what took the city from a popular beach town to a premier tourism destination, they likely will say it was the opening of the San Diego Convention Center.
The idea of a major convention hall had been tossed around for several years before the first phase of the waterfront facility began construction in 1985. And some credit one man,hotelier Doug Manchester,with having the insight and a piece of land to make it happen.
“He helped to position San Diego as a convention city,” said Reint Reinders, the chairman and chief executive officer of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau. “(Manchester) saw that San Diego had the potential to draw large conventions. And that was when the downtown was still rough around the edges.”
After a site at the foot of Broadway was shot down by the city’s voters, Manchester picked up the ball by swapping 17 acres of land where the convention center now stands for a little less than four acres on which he would eventually build the first 875-room tower of Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego hotel.
He would eventually acquire two additional acres to make room for the Manchester Grand Hyatt’s second tower. The waterfront land leases were under the control of the San Diego Unified Port District.
The initial plan, Manchester said, was to build a second tower for his Intercontinental Hotel,now the Marriott Hotel & Marina,to accommodate conventioneers.
But construction became mired in delays. For one, the Port District balked at a bid price of $137 million, which was $12 million more than what was original planned. The agency then sent the project back to the drawing board.
“The convention center was supposed to be completed in October of 1987,” Manchester said. “The Intercontinental’s expansion opened in the fall of 1987.”
The final tab for the center’s first incarnation in 1.7 million square feet of space was $164 million. Although it opened in late 1989, it wasn’t fully operational until the first quarter of 1990, Manchester said.
“It nearly broke us,” he said, explaining that the new tower of the 1,354-room Intercontinental, which was then reflagged as a Marriott, went largely unoccupied before the convention center opened.
Manchester ultimately settled a lawsuit he filed against the Port District for $11 million and went on to build the 1,625-room Manchester Grand Hyatt, the largest hotel in Southern California. The first tower of the Manchester Grand Hyatt opened in December 1992 and the second opened in August 2003.
But leisure tourism still is the county’s mainstay.
Vacationers make up about 75% of the county’s overnight visitors, according to the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau. The rest are meeting-goers at the convention center or at the county’s major hotels.
But one of the most important contributions the convention center makes is the national and international exposure it gives the destination. That helps it compete with Anaheim and Los Angeles for big conventions and other travel.
“Prior to the convention center, all we had were single-property meetings,” said Tom Di Zinno, who heads Di Zinno Thompson advertising,the former agency of record for the convention bureau. “So in terms of exposure, the size of the groups was limited.
“The Convention Center added exposure of the benefits of this destination to much broader audiences,” he said. “But the second thing that brought San Diego to maturity was the groundbreaking development of a leisure tourism destination brand.”
Lewis is a staff writer with the San Diego Business Journal.
