We're going to see a lot of these…articles speculating on whether Comic-Con International will decamp from San Diego and relocate elsewhere. I am cited as a person whose opinion — that Comic-Con will not move — is worthy of some consideration. Let me explain why I think what I think…
It's not that the folks who run Comic-Con would refuse to move if they felt the convention was being harmed by staying put. They clearly like San Diego and the set-up they have there but if they couldn't get the terms and cooperation they need, they'd migrate. I just don't think the folks in San Diego who control the convention center and the connected businesses could possibly be so f'ing stupid that they'd let this thing get away.
Estimates vary on how much loot Comic-Con brings into the local economy. Whatever it is, it's a lot. Comic-Con is by far the largest annual convention to hit the city and even if some of us are a little frugal in our dining, it's a massive cash infusion. If Comic-Con does not do wonders for businesses in San Diego, no convention does and they shouldn't have built that big convention center in the first place, let alone be frantic to expand its size.
And it isn't just a matter of how much Comic-Con itself energizes the economy there for five days each year. It's that that whole section of town is constructed to cater to conventions. That's why they built the Marriott next door and the Hyatt next door to the Marriott and the Hilton on the other side of the convention center and the other Hilton across from it, etc. It's to service and exploit those who attend whatever's in the convention center and/or at Petco Park. Petco Park alone won't do it, especially when it ain't Baseball Season.
The entire financial Raison d'être of that area began with Comic-Con. Comic-Con is what made San Diego a convention town. Before that, the whole area was bars and strip joints…and tattoo parlors in the Good Ol' Days when the only people who got them were sailors. Downtown S.D. and the area now filled with hotels and the convention center catered to sailors stationed in the area. And when that stopped being a viable industry, along came the convention industry.
Comic-Con is the keystone to that industry. If the city lost that, they wouldn't just lose what Comic-Con brings in. They'd jeopardize their entire rep and momentum as a town that attracts other conventions. So I don't think the city will ever be dumb enough not to give Comic-Con the terms and support it requires.
Ah, but might Comic-Con move in order to get bigger? To expand beyond the capacity of that building in San Diego? I don't think so. For one thing, even a larger convention center might not serve Comic-Con's needs because it wouldn't have the outside support. The Los Angeles Convention Center has more square footage…but it doesn't have all those hotels and restaurants within easy walking distance. It's also a terrible, terrible convention center with a confusing, sprawling layout and awful parking and too many other crowd magnets within a block or two. For reasons I've stated here before, I don't think Las Vegas or Anaheim would work, either. Those are the alternatives.
I could be wrong about the city driving Comic-Con away. San Diego has not always had the sanest governing bodies — Google "Bob Filner" for but one example — but they'd have to be quite mad to lose one of the best things that ever happened to that city. And the only way I see Comic-Con getting bigger is to expand into more of the surrounding city, which is not really an option in L.A., Vegas or Anaheim.
I think…I hope we'll be there for a long, long time. One of these days, I'll write a long post about how my feelings about Comic-Con are changing; how some aspects of it no longer thrill me as they once did and I've found others to take their place. But that'll be a post about me, not the convention. The convention as it is works just fine, right where it is. I don't want to see them screw with it by trying to move it to another city. (Then again, WonderCon did survive the relocation from San Francisco to Anaheim, so…)