The Chargers’ plan for a downtown stadium-convention center will not generate enough meeting business to justify an increase in the hotel tax, concludes a new study funded by the tourism industry.

The analysis, which was prepared by a Chicago-based consulting firm and released on Wednesday, is at odds with rosier predictions by Chargers consultants who also have looked at the financial impact of a convention center built as part of a stadium.

× Chargers release their vision for stadium

The Chargers are asking voters this November to increase the hotel room tax from 12.5 percent to 16.5 percent to help pay for an estimated $1.8 billion stadium and adjoining convention center development that would be located east of Petco Park.


The proposed center, the study says, holds only limited appeal to meeting planners and would generate just $2.3 million more a year in additional hotel tax revenue, compared to what it estimates are the $67 million in annual public costs for both construction and operation of the project.

“If you weigh the investment required to generate that impact, it doesn’t add up,” said Thomas Hazinski, managing director of HVS, a sports and entertainment facilities consulting firm hired by San Diego’s hotelier-run Tourism Marketing District. “There’s a big gap between what you’re investing and what you’re getting back, and it really doesn’t move San Diego forward in a significant way as a convention destination and we know that San Diego is facility-constrained.”

Hotel owners and tourism industry leaders continue to push for an expansion of the city’s bayfront convention center, although the project has long been stalled because the financing plan relied on a hotelier-approved hotel tax increase that was ruled unconstitutional.

The Chargers, who will soon be releasing their consultants’ formal analysis of the convention center portion of the project, were immediately critical of the report’s conclusions.


“The results of this study were pre-determined from the outset by a few highly self- interested hotel owners who have once again wasted taxpayer money on a misbegotten effort to justify a contiguous convention center expansion that has already been struck down by the courts and that is unlikely to be built,” Chargers adviser Fred Maas said in an emailed statement.

The Tourism Marketing District board, which oversees the expenditure of revenues raised via a 2 percent surcharge on hotel stays, commissioned the study in June to determine what benefits, if any, would be realized from a hybrid stadium-convention complex.

“We’re in charge of the marketing of the city of San Diego, and we need to know if this facility would help the marketing and to what degree,” said board chairman Bill Evans. “It appears now that some of the assumptions the Chargers are using to promote the project are not the same that HVS has come up with.

“We were careful not to prejudice the consultants. We did not tell them what we wanted the report to be.”


The board of the marketing district, which spent $30,000 on the study, will be meeting soon to decide how to proceed, but Evans emphasized that it is not permitted to take positions on political issues, including ballot initiatives.

The HVS report finds little to like about the Chargers’ convention center proposal, basing its conclusions on interviews with meeting planners, existing research on convention business and similar convention center and stadium developments.

Among its conclusions:

-- Conventions that are too large to fit within the existing center will not use it in combination with the stadium’s convention facility


-- Exhibit space in the Chargers’ project would only meet the needs of 30 percent of San Diego’s convention events.

-- The project would be a competitor with the existing center, potentially reducing occupancy there.

-- Because of its smaller size, limited availability during football season, and “event planner dissatisfaction with the plan,” the center would attract an estimated 69,000 new room nights per year. That is significantly less than the 124,000 room nights projected in a study last year that analyzed the economic potential of a convention center annex. That study was commissioned by the Convention Center Corp.

The Chargers’ economic development consultant has projected a much different financial reward, estimating in a preliminary analysis that its project would eventually generate 200,000 additional room nights a year -- enough demand to support 800 new hotel rooms downtown.


The team also has sought to debunk claims that it would be almost impossible to book conventions years in advance during the NFL season. The Chargers have said that the NFL has agreed to schedule away games on specific Sundays each month, along with the adjacent Monday and Thursday nights. The concession would theoretically allow convention planners to book events years in advance for 10 days each month during the season.

Not really, says the HVS study.

Larger conventions typically require an average of nine days of building occupancy, but most of the event blocks offered in the NFL’s proposed schedule are less than nine days, HVS said.

“We analyzed this in great detail, plugged everything into a nine-season schedule for each year and found that these blocks of time are only available 43 percent of the time,” Hazinski said.


The consultant also looked at a few existing examples of cities where stadiums have been adjacent to or connected to convention centers but found they did little to boost convention business.

“The joint use of football stadiums and convention centers has been tried and largely failed in three cities - St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Atlanta, the report concludes. “The Indianapolis RCA Dome has been demolished and replaced with exhibition space. The Georgia Dome in Atlanta is slated for demolition after a replacement stadium is built.”

The Chargers’ ballot measure recently got an endorsement from the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, but also is facing opposition from various individuals, including San Diego council members Chris Cate and David Alvarez. Mayor Kevin Faulconer has yet to take a position.

lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-2251 Twitter: @loriweisberg