Convention Center Follies. Heywood T. Sanders
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they have not necessarily been widely embraced or approved by local taxpayers and voters.
The civic auditoriums and convention centers built in the first half of the twentieth century were commonly developed by city governments, financed using general obligation bonds. In the vast majority of states, that debt required majority—in some states, two-thirds majority—approval by the local electorate. When city governments began the wave of “modern” convention facilities after World War II, often as part of new civic centers or downtown renewal schemes, those too had to be voted on and approved by the local electorate.
Los Angeles civic leaders first sought a major convention venue early in the twentieth century, but local voters failed to provide the needed two-thirds majority for a memorial auditorium bond issue in 1920. Mayor Fletcher Bowron backed another auditorium bond issue in 1939 with the argument that Cleveland’s auditorium was a “great success.” But his enthusiasm was not shared by the city council, which voted against putting the auditorium bond proposal to the voters. A plan for a “huge civic auditorium costing $25,000,000” was on the ballot in 1951, paired with a proposed music center and slum clearance funding. All three propositions were defeated. Auditorium backers returned with a $27 million auditorium and convention hall bond plan in May 1953. Despite the editorial plea by the Los Angeles Times that “national gatherings …. pass us by,” the voters again failed to produce a two-thirds majority. Convention hall backers tried again in June 1954, with the argument that the city had lost $38 million the previous year in convention business. And once again the voters said no. Los Angeles did not open a convention center until July 1971, a feat it only managed after an extended debate over the site, and by using a special authority to issue the bonds and bypass the city’s voters.33
The efforts to build a new civic auditorium or convention hall in San Diego were no less problematic. A plan for a new civic center and auditorium in 1947 was defeated at the polls. A bond proposal for a convention hall and theater was voted on in June 1956, and failed to get the required two-thirds majority, winning approval from just over 60 percent of the voters. City officials and civic leaders chose to place the convention center scheme on the ballot again in November; again it failed, winning just a 49.9 percent “yes” vote. San Diego only succeeded in building a new convention center in 1964 by finding a way around the voters, using a combination of a lease arrangement and the proceeds from the sale of other city property. Business leaders and the Centre City Development Corporation developed a plan for a new downtown convention center in the late 1970s. Seeking to avoid a public vote, the city council adopted a scheme financed with lease revenue bonds in October 1980. But citizen antipathy and the reaction of outlying hotel owners opposed to a downtown center that would provide them little business led to a successful petition drive that forced a public vote. In a May 1981 ballot, the proposed center received just 43 percent of the vote and was defeated.34
Other cities demonstrated a parallel fragility of convention center bond proposals. Cleveland voters turned down two successive funding plans in the 1950s, finally approving one on the third try. Atlanta’s electorate defeated a proposed Civic Center in 1962, approving a less expensive version the following year. Raleigh voters in 1992 defeated a proposed $95 million convention center bond issue by 58 to 42 percent.
In more recent years Pittsburgh area voters turned down a proposal for a new convention center (together with new sports stadium) in 1997; Columbus voters twice defeated tax issues to fund a new convention center; San Jose voters failed to provide a sufficient majority for a center expansion in 2002; and Portland, Oregon voters nixed a convention center expansion in 1998. Yet despite the verdict of local voters, each of these cities, much like Los Angeles and San Diego, succeeded in building a new convention center or expansion. That success in the face of electoral defeat has been managed with a series of financial and political innovations. Pittsburgh turned to a sports and exhibition authority; Columbus created a countywide convention facilities authority; Portland turned to a combination of city, county, and metro area government. What these cities, and a host of others, have managed is nothing less than a reconstruction of the means of financing convention facilities and similar projects, employing a variety of fiscal vehicles that avoid the “problems” of popular democracy and voter review. This fiscal reconstruction is the focus of Chapter 2.
The convention center boom has also been built on a parallel reconstruction of urban politics. It is not just reluctant voters who have stood in the way of convention center development. For decades, center building was stymied by local conflict and opposition over issues beyond the immediate fiscal ones. Much of that conflict involved disputes over location and site. Chicago’s efforts to build a major convention hall from the 1920s into the 1950s were marked by continuing disputes over where a new facility would go, and thus who would benefit or suffer. During the 1960s, St. Louis saw two competing convention center proposals, one from the mayor and one from local business leaders, at very different downtown sites. And in San Diego, Mayor Pete Wilson’s plans for a new downtown center in 1980 were opposed by a coalition of outlying hotel owners and defeated at the polls. Yet in all these cases, and dozens of others, the apparent conflict was eventually successfully managed, the opposition eventually overcome, and a new center completed.
The fundamental conflict over center location was not about technical planning questions or issues of accessibility or land cost. Rather, it was over gaining (or potentially losing) the benefits a major public investment could have for urban space. The promise of a new or bigger convention facility was that it would draw thousands of new visitors and millions of their dollars to the city—what Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial writers termed “the convention pot o’ gold” in 1956. That flood of visitors would spur the development of new hotels, restaurants, and shops. But while local hotel owners and newspaper publishers might all agree on the great benefits for the community at large or even for downtown, much of that boost would be narrower, limited to the immediate environs of the new convention hall. That meant that property interests or developers focused on one area of the city or the downtown would not necessarily embrace a new convention facility somewhere else.35
A number of geographically distinct business groups in Chicago—the West Central Association, the North Central Association, the South Side Planning Board—each sought the convention center in its own area to bolster land values and encourage new development. Boston’s War Memorial (later Hynes) Auditorium, opened in early 1965, was part of the new Prudential Center development on the site of the former Boston & Albany rail yards in Back Bay, intended to support new hotel and retail construction. The goals of convention center building also went beyond encouraging and supporting new development to altering the character and potential of land in or near downtown.36
When the Los Angeles Times editorialized about the civic benefits of a new convention hall in 1953, it noted that the proposed downtown location was “in a somewhat dilapidated state,” and the buildings’ “removal would improve the area and cause a sprucing up of neighboring structures.” And when in 1954 the leaders of the Chicago Planning Commission and Land Clearance Commission joined a group of leading business leaders to consider the Fort Dearborn development proposal for the area north of the downtown Loop, mayoral adviser James Downs noted the possibility of building a new convention hall at the south end of the Loop, arguing that “a large scale redevelopment at this site would tend to balance Fort Dearborn and anchor the Loop securely.”37
Writing in his pioneering volume Principles of City Land Values in 1924, Richard M. Hurd had concluded,
To summarize, the effect of public buildings, if located at or near the old business centre they tend to maintain central strength in their first location, as in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. This is the normal case. The first exception would be where public buildings are located at a moderate distance from the centre, where the tendency is to draw business in their direction.38
For planners and real estate experts such as James Downs, Hurd’s assessment tapped the potential role of a new convention center in shaping land use and development. A new facility might serve as an “anchor” for the existing central business district. Located on the edge of the downtown core, it could serve as a bulwark against adjacent