Daily Business Report-Dec. 29, 2015
The San Diego Convention Center
Record-Breaking 2016 Expected
For San Diego Convention Center
The San Diego Convention Center Corporation is forecasting a record-breaking year in 2016 in terms of primary attendance, hotel room nights, building occupancy and direct attendee spending from a total of 108 events currently scheduled in the facility.
The total regional impact is expected to eclipse $1.2 billion based on a forecasted all-time record $708.1 million in direct attendee spending. Approximately $25.6 million in tax revenues are expected to be generated by convention attendees, helping to reduce the tax burden on local taxpayers and pay for essential city services.
Sixty-six primary citywide conventions are expected to attract an all-time facility record 673,814 primary attendees, surpassing the previous record set in 2008. Forty-two secondary events are expected to draw 228,545 local and regional attend-ees. A record 856,035 hotel room nights are projected in 2016, beating the previous high mark set in 2003.
“The upcoming year will be our strongest on record when it comes to attendance and room night generation which is great news for the convention and meeting industry in San Diego in the months ahead,” said Carol Wallace, president and CEO. “It is a particularly exciting year ahead as we look forward to hosting the MLB All-Star Fanfest in the facility this July.”
Fifteen medical meetings are forecast to generate $458.1 million in total regional impact in 2016. Over 148,000 people are expected to attend medical meetings at the center accounting for 353,734 hotel room nights and approximately $9.7 million in tax revenues. The projected medical meeting attendance, hotel room nights and tax revenues are all the highest they have been since 2007 and third highest overall.
Some of the major medical shows convening at the center in 2016 include the Society for Neuroscience, American Society of Hematology, Experimental Biology, Digestive Disease Week and the American Academy of Otolaryngology.
In partnership with the San Diego Padres and the city of San Diego, the San Diego Convention Center will be a part of the 87th Major League Baseball All-Star Week in July. The center will serve as home to the MLB All-Star Fanfest, a full-facility multi-day baseball fan convention. This will be the first time the event will be held Downtown and only the third time it has ever been to San Diego in its 82-year history.
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Two More Littoral Combat Ships
To be Homeported in San Diego
Two more Littoral Combat Ships will be homeported in San Diego once they are commissioned into the Navy next summer, the Navy reported.
The future USS Detroit and USS Montgomery will call San Diego home by 2020.
So far, the first four ships — Freedom, USS Independence, Fort Worth and USS Coronado are homeported at San Diego. USS Milwaukee and USS Jackson were both recently commissioned and will join those ships in San Diego, though Milwaukee will arrive later than planned. Milwaukee was commissioned last month and was headed for Naval Station Mayport, Fla., when it experienced a failure in the propulsion system. The ship was towed to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia, and the ship may be in for repairs until February.
The Navy is rebalancing its fleet to support a national shift to the Asia-Pacific. By 2020, 60 percent of the Navy’s ships and aircraft will be in the Pacific Fleet — with an emphasis on the newest and most capable platforms, including the LCSs, the new big-deck amphibious assault ship USS America, and the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance plane.
How Workforce will Drive
San Diego’s Next Gen Economy
On Jan. 14, San Diego Regional EDC will release a study analyzing how San Diego stacks up against its peer metros in talent retention and attraction. The event will include lunch, a presentation of the study highlights, and a panel discussion about strategies to reinforce the region’s workforce strengths and combat our weaknesses.
Where: The Heights at Del Mar, 12770 El Camino Real, San Diego 92130
Time: noon to 1:30 p.m.
Tickets: $21.99
To register, click here
La Jolla Institute Receives $1 Million Gift
The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology has received a $1 million gift from John Major, chairman of the institute’s board of directors, and his wife, Susan.
“John and Sue have been tremendous advocates of the institute’s mission to marshal the immune system’s power to improve health and prevent disease,” said Mitchell Kronenberg, the institute’s president and chief scientific officer. “Their longstanding commitment and generosity are a compelling testament to the vital importance of the exemplary research our scientists are pursuing.”
“La Jolla Institute is a world-class organization that’s on the right track to create a world without disease,” said John Major. “It deserves all the energy and support we can provide.”
The gift was instrumental in recruiting Ferhat Ay, an accomplished bioinformaticist, to La Jolla Institute. Ay, the inaugural holder of the Institute Leadership Professorship in Computational Biology, will carry out work to yield the power of informatics to extract potentially life-saving information from the data generated in the institute’s laboratories. every day.
Downtown’s Big Building Boom
If you’ve noticed a few more construction cranes on the downtown skyline, your eyes don’t deceive. San Diego’s Centre City has more than $6.4 billion in 63 projects under construction, approved or under review — an amount equal to more than 40 percent of the 1,600-acre community’s entire $15.5 billion in assessed valuation, according to Civic San Diego, the Downtown planning agency, and the county assessor’s office. And that doesn’t count projects for which there is no estimated value provided or big projects in the future, such as a convention center expansion, Downtown stadium and a new city hall or the redevelopment of Seaport Village and Horton Plaza shopping center. — San Diego Union-Tribune
