San Diego Convention Ctr Making More Room for Geeks

I know this isn’t the sexiest, most cutting edge pop culture news, but to a geek like me (and maybe a geek like you), this is pretty important. As you likely know, the San Diego Comic-Con International convention is Mecca for geeks from around the world. Each year, Comic-Con is held at the San Diego Convention Center and each year it gets closer and closer to not being able to contain the more than 126,000 people that attend the event every July, selling it out months in advance the last 3 years in a row.

There has been much speculation as to what the convention center could do to keep Comic-Con in San Diego, where it brings in millions in revenue for the city every year. And since Comic-Con’s current contract with the convention center ends in 2012, they’ve got some decisions to make. Some have suggested that they move the whole thing to Las Vegas, where there are more than enough hotels to handle the crowds (but it’s SUPER HOT in July and we sure wouldn’t be the only convention in town), or Los Angeles, where… okay, LA is just a horrible idea. Yes, downtown is getting better (safer, more interesting), but it’s still a long way from being able to accomodate the kinds of masses that overflow the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego every year. That many geeks would destroy downtown LA. Or they’d wander one block outside of the “safe zone” and end up getting stripped for nerd parts, which would leave more than one geek without the money to buy lots and lots of exclusive action figures. Regardless, San Diego is doing something about it. In fact, Comic-Con is so important to the survival of the convention center and the prosperity of the city, that they were the only convention client invited to speak at the press conference held last September when the expansion project was first proposed.

The convention center currently has 814,000 square feet of space, which would be increased up to 1.2 million square feet with the expansion toward the bay side of the structure. They’re even planning on creating a footbridge that will arc from 4th street, right outside the Hilton, over the convention center and ending on the bay side of the building where all of the construction will take place, expanding not only into more meeting space, but also places for dining and shopping, including a rooftop restaurant. These conceptual renderings and the video below gives us an idea of what we can hopefully expect by the year 2014…

Yes, I know that much of the proposals made last year is old news, because I’m sure that some of you may have been following this story since then, but things really picked up on June 2nd, when SignOnSanDiego.com posted this article about the latest developments in the new expansion plans. I’m excited for the potential that will come out of this expansion, not just for San Diego (retail revenue, jobs), but for my fellow geeks. I’m not sure that making Comic-Con bigger is the way to go, but if they can make the area where we can hold Comic-Con bigger, then I’m all for it. I’ve spent many years at the San Diego Comic-Con learning how to walk sideways through sweaty crowds grasping for rare and collectible promotional goodies, but I’d be thrilled if I didn’t have to do that anymore. Breathing room is nice (did I ever tell you about the year when the air conditioners stopped working one day? phew!). Either way, I’ll be the guy standing about a mile and a half back in the line wrapped around the building, waiting to get into Hall H every morning, just like everyone else…