After the success of the initial voter-approved bond issue in 1964, San Antonio managed a fiscal regime that has supported successive center expansions and renovations, and all without recourse to the voters. And the city appears fully capable, fiscally and politically, of continuing major convention center investment for decades to come, without the risk or need for deal-making attendant to a public vote.
Cincinnati
A new auditorium or convention hall had long been a goal for Cincinnati business and political leaders through the first half of the twentieth century. Two successive bond proposals for a new auditorium were defeated by the voters, in 1939 and 1940. The city’s 1948 Metropolitan Master Plan included an “Exposition Hall-Arena,” along with a merchandise mart and new stadium, as part of a proposed civic center on the city’s redeveloped riverfront. But as city business leaders increasingly focused on the decline of the downtown core during the 1950s, the location and priority of a new convention center proved a point of some contention. City planners continued to envision the convention facility and auditorium as the anchors of a new civic center complex on the riverfront. Democratic city council member John Gilligan had his own proposal, for a new convention hall anchoring the west side of the downtown core area, a location embraced by the City Planning Commission in a December 1957 land use plan.47
For Gilligan, recalling the events after more than 30 years, a broad package of downtown investments, combined with federal urban renewal aid, offered the ultimate political solution—“It became evident that attempting to do one project at a time wasn’t going to get anywhere; projects and plans began to get inclusive…. [We] had to put together packages that all the downtown interests saw some benefit to their situation, were not being left out.”48
The conclusion was little different for the council’s Republicans. Eugene Ruehlmann recalled, “the restaurant and hotel people were interested in the convention center, the big supporters of riverfront were the Cincinnatus Association [a local civic organization]; by putting them together we could get diverse groups together on both projects.”49
For the city’s business leaders, the central goal was revitalization of the downtown core, not the riverfront or even a new convention center. Those leaders, organized as the Citizens Development Committee, were thoroughly unwilling to see their central focus—the core area urban renewal effort—run the risk of possible defeat by the voters. Discussing the politics of the package in March 1962, the business group’s conclusion was direct: “It was unanimously agreed that CDC favors the issuance of councilmanic [nonvoted] bonds for financing the City’s share of the Core Area project due to the prospect that a referendum would be unsuccessful. Such a failure would naturally inhibit Council from issuing councilmanic bonds following an opposing expression from the voters.”50
The CDC was willing to embrace the riverfront and convention hall proposals, as long as the city’s focus was kept on the central business district. And while the business group was willing to back and finance an expansive bond campaign, it did so with the dual provisos that the downtown renewal be the first priority and that downtown funding not be subject to a public vote.
The decision to put the convention hall and the riverfront renewal together as a single $16.6 million proposal was almost unheard of. It reflected a clear political calculus that the convention center would be a tough “sell” to the public. According to John Gilligan, the center “in most people’s eyes was not that great a thing, just of benefit to a few downtown interests.”51 Packaging it together with the riverfront, for former planning director Herbert Stevens, recognized that “you have to link them together … the convention center had interest with the business community, the riverfront was pizzazz.”52
The political wisdom of packaging the riverfront renewal and convention hall plans together on the November 1962 ballot was validated by the vote results. The convention center bonds won a 56.58 percent “yes” vote—just slightly over the required 55 percent majority. And much of the voting support had come not from the city’s better-off neighborhoods, but rather from lower-income, largely African American areas.
Perhaps the most salient result of the thin electoral margin for the convention center bonds was the fragility of public support for large-scale downtown public investment. The city would systematically avoid placing these kinds of proposals on the ballot in subsequent years and decades.
The new Cincinnati Convention Center officially opened in August 1967, with 95,000 square feet of exhibit space. Even by the standards of the time, it was a relatively small facility. But any potential expansion effort would have to await a suitable political and fiscal environment. Finally in early 1981, the city commissioned the Laventhol & Horwath consulting firm to examine the feasibility of an expansion and the means to pay for it. The Laventhol report argued that the center was in need of both refurbishment and expansion, at a cost of between $40 and $50 million. And the Laventhol consultants recommended a combination of a variety of financing mechanisms, including a new city bond issue, “excess” income tax revenues, and $10 million in “philanthropic contributions.” The Laventhol analysis did not suggest asking the city’s voters.53
With growing local discord over the issue of downtown versus neighborhood public investment, the city council sought to avoid a public vote: “Because there was a chance voters wouldn’t approve it,” according to city council member Guy Guckenberger. The council member went on, “We felt the city couldn’t afford to take that chance.” City director of development Nell Surber echoed Guckenberger: “But you never know what the public will do and we just plain had our backs to the wall.”54
The final financing scheme for the expansion had the city paying $27 million, the Hamilton County government adding $16 million, $5 million from the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau, and additional funds from the state and federal governments. The expanded center, renamed in honor of Cincinnatian Dr. Albert Sabin, was dedicated in June 1986 and fully opened in 1987. The expansion boosted the Sabin Center to a total of 162,000 square feet of exhibit space. A host of cost overruns brought the final to $61.9 million, with serious conflict between the city and county governments over bearing the increased cost. But by joining with Hamilton County and adding state and federal dollars, the city succeeded in getting a larger center without recourse to the voters.
It had taken more than a dozen years from the original opening of Cincinnati’s convention center before there was serious consideration of an expansion. The pace proved more rapid in the wake of the 1986 unveiling of the Sabin Center. As the committee charged with reviewing the city’s downtown development plans finalized its report in late 1990, a headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer on November 15 brought the news that “Bigger Convention Hall Urged But City Skeptical of Adding More Debt.” Yet financing a major expansion, particularly while avoiding a public vote, was not a simple or easy process.55
When the city’s chosen consultants, PriceWaterhouse, delivered their report in June 1995, it predictably called on the city to expand the center, arguing that Cincinnati would see “continuing decline in center city retail and restaurant sales if it does not expand its convention center.” Their recommendation was to double the center exhibit hall space, to some 600,000 square feet, at a cost of $290 million. But the city did not have the resources to support some $300 million in new debt itself.56
By late 1998, with no real progress on the expansion effort, city officials brought the PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultants, led by David Petersen, back. Their February 1999 report again endorsed more space, albeit not as much as the earlier analysis. But the proposed expansion now carried a price tag estimated