{"id":244226,"date":"2011-04-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/critics-warn-against-spending-millions-to-market-balboa-park-centennial\/"},"modified":"2011-04-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T07:00:00","slug":"critics-warn-against-spending-millions-to-market-balboa-park-centennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/critics-warn-against-spending-millions-to-market-balboa-park-centennial\/","title":{"rendered":"Critics warn against spending millions to market Balboa Park Centennial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Critics<\/a>
(Courtesy of Balboa Park Marketing)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Por Margie M. Palmer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Critics of projected marketing marketing expenditures for Balboa Park\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau has projected that the celebration could generate as much as $661 million for the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about a national media campaign, that\u2019s 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,\u201d said Chris Crotty of San Diego-based political consulting firm Crotty Consulting. \u201cOne, it\u2019s a heck of a lot of money to spend. Two, it\u2019s questionable as to whether it will be as big of a draw as they\u2019re projecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a March 23 San Diego Union-Tribune article, councilmember Lori Zaph was quoted as saying Balboa Park \u201cIs and will be the Central Park of the West Coast.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve 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\u2019d never heard of Balboa Park. The only thing I knew about San Diego when I moved here was that it was by the beach,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese numbers are coming from our tourism and marketing division, who are local experts on this matter,\u201d Gloria said. \u201cWhile 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\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not spending the money to properly market the event, he said, would be a missed financial opportunity for the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople out there would say that this spending is frivolous in these economic times, but the missed opportunity
\nin terms of what the city could make in revenue would be phenomenal,\u201d Gloria said.<\/p>\n

Crotty remains skeptical, pointing to the city\u2019s current $57-million budget deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a heck of a lot of money to spend,\u201d he said. \u201cThe number being thrown around for revenue generation is incredibly high, almost to the point where it\u2019s unbelievable. It appears to me as being a major gamble for a very speculative opportunity to generate income.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Margie M. Palmer Critics of projected marketing marketing expenditures for Balboa Park\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Critics warn against spending millions to market Balboa Park Centennial","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}