By Margie M. Palmer

Critics of projected marketing marketing expenditures for Balboa Park’s 2015 Panama-California Centennial Celebration suggest an independently verifiable report should be sought before San Diego commits to spending millions on a national advertising campaign.

The San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau has projected that the celebration could generate as much as $661 million for the city.

“If you’re talking about a national media campaign, that’s going to cost between $20 and $40 million, and then you need to raise money for the actual event, which is another $12 million on top of that,” said Chris Crotty of San Diego-based political consulting firm Crotty Consulting. “One, it’s a heck of a lot of money to spend. Two, it’s questionable as to whether it will be as big of a draw as they’re projecting.”

In a March 23 San Diego Union-Tribune article, councilmember Lori Zaph was quoted as saying Balboa Park “Is and will be the Central Park of the West Coast.” Yet Crotty disagrees with those who suggest that Balboa Park has the potential to draw the same type of tourism to San Diego as Central Park does to New York.

“I’ve lived in a number of states from Texas to Florida to New York, and I even lived up in San Francisco for a while, and until I got to San Diego I’d never heard of Balboa Park. The only thing I knew about San Diego when I moved here was that it was by the beach,” he said. “They’re relying on statistics to come up with this figure of $661 million in revenue for the city, but I could make just about any event generate millions of dollars for the city using creative sampling techniques.”

San Diego City Councilmember Todd Gloria, however, stands by projections that the centennial could be four times as large as Comic-Con, which has been estimated to have an economic impact of more than $190 million to the city in hotel, restaurant and transportation revenue.

“These numbers are coming from our tourism and marketing division, who are local experts on this matter,” Gloria said. “While Comic-Con is a couple of days, our centennial celebration is going to be a year long. The 1915 Panama-California Exposition was an international event, and we’d like to have a similar appeal. If we are able to secure the funds to market to that type of audience, we absolutely believe it could bring in three to four times what Comic-Con does.”

Not spending the money to properly market the event, he said, would be a missed financial opportunity for the city.

“People out there would say that this spending is frivolous in these economic times, but the missed opportunity
in terms of what the city could make in revenue would be phenomenal,” Gloria said.

Crotty remains skeptical, pointing to the city’s current $57-million budget deficit.

“It’s a heck of a lot of money to spend,” he said. “The number being thrown around for revenue generation is incredibly high, almost to the point where it’s unbelievable. It appears to me as being a major gamble for a very speculative opportunity to generate income.”