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California
The San Francisco skyline and its iconic Transamerica Pyramid
AN EXPANDED MOSCONE CENTER IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF WHAT THE GOLDEN STATE HAS TO OFFER By Anthony Bilden
California is a state of diversity, from multicultural cities like Los Angeles to the stark differences in climate that can be found in the northern and southern regions of the state. In turn, a great variety of experiences can complement a California meeting. This overview of the Golden State’s meeting destinations covers just some of the inviting options for planners, including cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco along with smaller but characterful cities like Long Beach.
While San Francisco has been occupying the spotlight with the recently completed Moscone Center expansion, an ongoing project that is making news is the renaming and expansion of Sacramento’s convention center. Together, these two enhanced centers will be a boon to Northern California’s meeting industry
SAN FRANCISCO This year marks the 150th anniversary of a San Francisco icon, Golden Gate Park. The park is home to a variety of venues and attractions that may pique the interest of attendees, including the de Young Museum, Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Gardens and a nine-hole golf course. To mark the occasion, an illuminated 150-foot observation wheel will be installed in the park for one year beginning April 4, the actual 150th birthday.
The park is among the bastions of the city’s tourism industry, as well as being a treasure for residents. Last year
was a milestone for San Francisco tourism. According to the San Francisco Travel Association, approximately 26.2 million people visited the city in 2019, up 1.4 percent from the 25.8 million in 2018. “This is the 10th consecutive year that we are able to report record-breaking outcomes for San Francisco’s tourism industry,” said Joe D’Alessandro, President and CEO of San Francisco Travel. He added that “Room nights booked and consumed at the Moscone Center exceeded one million in 2019. This is only the second year this has ever happened, 2014 being the first.” The City by the Bay’s convention center is poised to welcome even more delegates in future years with the $551 million expansion completed on Jan. 3, following a four-year construction period. After the addition of 157,000 sq. ft. of usable space, the Moscone Center now offers 504,914 sq. ft. of contiguous space (before expansion, the largest contiguous space was 260,000 sq. ft.) and a new, 49,776-sq.-ft., columnfree ballroom. The convention center’s new total number of meeting rooms is 114, including 82 in Moscone North and South. The project also added 107,000 sq. ft. of prefunction lobbies with views of the city and surrounding Yerba Buena Gardens, along with 25,000 sq. ft. of outdoor terraces. San Francisco is known for its eco-consciousness, and that value is certainly evident at Moscone Center, which has the highest LEED Platinum score of any new-build convention center in the world. Among its many distinctions, the center has the largest solar array on a municipal building in San Francisco, and the lowest carbon emissions per delegate of any major convention center in North America.
Two major-brand hotels are on the horizon: The 171-room Waldorf Astoria San Francisco, opening in 2022, and the 250-room Marriott SOMA Mission Bay, opening this summer. A recent opening that will appeal to many groups for its logistical convenience is the Grand Hyatt at SFO. The 351-room property, completed in September 2019, features more than 14,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space, a 70-seat restaurant, a Hyatt StayFit Gym and other amenities. Two major reopenings are also of note: the former Courtyard San Francisco Downtown reopens in April as The Clancy San Francisco, following a rebranding and $30 million renovation. Located in the South of Market (SoMa) district, the 410-room hotel houses 16 meeting rooms totaling 10,000 sq. ft. And in January, the Clift Royal Sonesta reopened after a renovation of the historic property’s 372 guestrooms. The Union Square hotel offers over 12,500 sq. ft. of function space, redesigned to afford more natural light. to Sacramento; one is the Future Farmers of America, a group that will utilize not only the new convention center but also the Golden 1 Center,” says Mike Testa, President and CEO, Visit Sacramento. “So we’ve been able to attract some larger groups because of the facility. The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium is probably the largest group Sacramento hosts, and they will be able to grow their event in the new facility.” Sacramento’s SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, renamed last August, has not been enhanced in about 20 years. “We’ve had some annual groups in town that were looking to grow and just based on the restrictions of the building, they weren’t able to do that,” Testa explains. “And this city has dramatically changed over the last five to 10 years; we offer a lot more than we ever did. So the attention we were getting based on our food scene, building a downtown arena [Golden 1 Center, opened in 2016] and a new hotel product really warranted a different convention center.”
Scheduled to be completed late this year, the project includes the following elements:
• A 160,000-sq.-ft. exhibit hall (previously 137,305 sq. ft.); • 79,100 sq. ft. of meeting space (previously 45,949); • 37 breakout rooms (previously 31); • A new, 40,000-sq.-ft. ballroom and a new, 15,300-sq.-ft. outdoor plaza; and • A renovation of the neighboring Community Center Theater and historic Memorial Auditorium. Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center “The attention we were getting based on our food scene, building a downtown arena and a new hotel product really warranted a different convention center.” —Mike Testa, President and CEO, Visit Sacramento CREDIT: VISIT SACRAMENTO
SACRAMENTO The state capital’s meetings business has been on an upswing over the last five years, and the current expansion and renovation of its convention center will help that trend continue. “We have booked a couple groups that are new “The walkability of the building is also different,” Testa adds. “A challenge in the previous incarnation [of the convention center] is if you had a meeting on one side of the building and had to get to the other, you’d better be in good physical shape because it was quite a hike. Now we’ve
cut through some of that by allowing folks to go through the building in the middle rather than just along the perimeter.” Part of Sacramento’s burgeoning hospitality industry is the new hotel product coming online. Currently the city offers 2,000 hotel rooms walkable from the convention center, and “we have about 800 rooms coming to downtown and a couple more [hotels] on the drawing board, so we hope over the next three years or so to add about 1,200 rooms downtown,” Testa explains.
A couple of small hotels will debut in the city this year. A 172-room Hyatt Centric property, a transformation of the 105-year-old Hotel Marshall and nearby Jade apartments, opens adjacent to the Golden 1 Center in late 2020. In addition, a 105-room Fort Sutter Hotel, a Tapestry by Hilton property, will open in Midtown near the B Street Theater. In addition, the culinary scene is gaining recognition, with over 300 restaurants near the convention center and 1.5 million acres of surrounding active farmland. “We had our first Michelin Guide come out last year. That’s a pretty good illustration of the caliber of restaurants we have in the city,” Testa says. “It’s been a huge selling point for Sacramento.”
LOS ANGELES In the areas of sports, entertainment and the arts, L.A. is already among the most prominent cities in the nation. But its renown will increase on these fronts with the opening of two major venues in the near future: SoFi Stadium and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Both promise meeting attendees new sources of free-time diversion and group experiences.
Opening this summer, the 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium at Hollywood Park will be home to the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams. Scheduled highlights include an opening concert by Taylor Swift on July 25 and 26, Super Bowl LVI in 2022 and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics. The largest stadium in the NFL, SoFi Stadium includes more than 260 luxury suites and more than 13,000 premium seats. Adjacent to the stadium is the 2.5-acre American Airlines Plaza and a 6,000-seat performance venue.
The $1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, expected to open in Exposition Park late next year, is a 275,000-sq.-ft. facility housing George Lucas’ personal collection of art, consisting of approximately 10,000 paintings and illustrations along with Hollywood memorabilia from landmark films such as Star Wars and The Ten Commandments. Designed by famed architect Ma Yansong, the museum will feature two state-of-the-art cinematic theaters, digital classrooms, 11 acres of green space, a restaurant and special event spaces.
Downtown L.A. is not only replete with points of interest such as the Los Angeles Conservancy, North Grand Avenue and Little Tokyo, but it’s also “meetings central.” The ASM Global-managed the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) offers 720,000 sq. ft. of exhibit hall space, 147,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, 64 column-free meeting rooms and a newly renovated 299-seat theater. The LACC is also on the leading edge of both technology and sustainability, with LEED Gold certification and 5G network capability. The quality of the LACC is matched by that of Los Angeles’ hotel portfolio, which has recently undergone upgrades. One of the most significant projects is the $50 million, property-wide renovation of the 984-room Los Angeles Airport Marriott, completed at the end of 2018.
Los Angeles’ Chinatown
The project refreshed the hotel’s 27 meeting rooms, totaling 54,640 sq. ft. of space. New restaurants include the Social Market & Eatery, JW’s Steakhouse, and Hangar 18 Bar & Kitchen. A more recent upgrade is the 297-suite W Los Angeles - West Beverly Hills’ $4 million function space renovation, completed in December 2019. The hotel’s 5,000 sq. ft. of function space now has a modernized design and state-of-the-art audiovisual with cascading projection screens as well as smart screens featuring the latest Bluetooth technology. Each space has a dedicated sound system and a media wall in the prefunction space.
Several boutique hotels are also making news in L.A., including the 220-room Godfrey Hotel Hollywood, featuring the 6,000-sq.-ft. Rooftop Pool & Bar; the 174-room The Hoxton, LA, located
Griffith Observatory affords panoramic views of Los Angeles and the Hollywood Sign
in a transformed 1925 building; the 156-room The Wayfarer DTLA, in the historic Broadway Corridor; and the 148-room Downtown LA Proper, a Fashion District hotel with 14,000 sq. ft. of function space and restaurants led by James Beard Award-winning chef Suzanne Goin. Speaking of new dining options, M.Georgina by Michelin-starred chef Melissa Perello opened in November. The 4,300-sq.-ft. establishment offers a private dining room can be booked for up to 20 guests for a seated dinner and up to 30 for a standing reception. A full restaurant buyout is also possible.
PASADENA Last year, the Pasadena Convention Center welcomed ServiceTitan’s growing user conference, known as Pantheon. The Glendale, CA-based company, which develops software for commercial and residential service providers, has held the conference in California since launching it in 2017, first in Hollywood and then in Downtown Los Angeles. By the time the group met in Pasadena in 2019, the number of attendees had grown from 200 to 1,500. This year, the company expects about 2,000 attendees, and the Pasadena
ServiceTitan’s user conference at the Pasadena Convention Center Convention Center will accommodate that number comfortably. The facility’s 55,000-sq.-ft. Exhibition Hall can be combined with its adjacent 25,000-sq.-ft. Grand Ballroom. Other spaces include a recently renovated, 17,000-sq.-ft. historic ballroom and a 28,000-sq.-ft. Conference Center with 18 meeting rooms on two levels. In addition, the 3,000-seat Pasadena Civic Auditorium is ideal for general sessions, and its Gold Room accommodates 250 for a banquet.
The convention center “feels at the same time modern and historic,” observes Lindsey Keefner, Director, Events with ServiceTitan. “The auditorium is absolutely beautiful inside: It’s very ornate and adds a level of gravitas to the Old Pasadena
—Lindsey Keefner, Director, Events, ServiceTitan
proceedings. But then the rest of the facility feels very clean and modern. It’s all on the same campus, so everyone has a chance to enjoy the California weather walking between the buildings, but at the same time it’s all really close. We had the exhibit hall, ballroom, theater and the conference center all going with different activities.” Keefner compliments both Visit Pasadena and the catering staff at the convention center as great partners in staging the user conference. Both were very receptive to her ideas, she relates.
ServiceTitan utilized six hotels in the area, primarily the
CREDIT: PASADENA CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU Pasadena Convention Center
of the recently renovated Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center and the adjacent 528-room Hyatt Regency Long Beach, along with the 469-room Westin Long Beach, which sits across from the Center. The convention center complex offers over 400,000 sq. ft. of exhibit and meeting space, including the 45,000-sq.-ft. Pacific Room with built-in AV, 34 high-tech meeting rooms, two theaters and a 13,000-seat arena. Those facilities are supplemented by 10,000 sq. ft. of function space at the Hyatt and 34,000 sq. ft. at the Westin.
Another notable lodging choice is the 299-room Hilton Long Beach, located one mile from Center and offering 30,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. An “only in Long Beach experience” can be had at the 347-stateroom Queen Mary Hotel, which offers more than 80,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space in 14 Art Deco salons.
Launched on May 27, 1936, the Queen Mary has welcomed an estimated 50 million visitors since “retiring” in Long Beach on December 9, 1967. Another icon of the city’s nautical culture is the Aquarium of the Pacific, which can host private events. Reportedly the fourth most-attended aquarium in the nation, it displays about 12,000 animals and more than 100 exhibits. The Pacific Visions wing, which includes a state-of-the-art theater, an art gallery, game tables and live animal exhibits, opened last year.
Long Beach’s art museums present a variety of offsite event options for groups. They include the Museum of Latin American Art; Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum; University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach; Long Beach Historical Society Museum; and the Long Beach Museum of Art. The latter institution is housed in the historic 1911 Elizabeth Milbank Anderson House and offers event catering by Claire’s, the museum’s upscale oceanfront restaurant.
Queen Mary , a fixture of Long Beach’s tourism industry since 1967
311-room Sheraton Pasadena Hotel, which lies adjacent to the convention center, and the 296-room Hilton Pasadena. The hotels offer 11,708 sq. ft. and 30,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, respectively. All the hotels are in walking distance to the convention center campus, and “it’s absolutely a neighborhood people feel comfortable walking around in,” Keefner says. “There are different food options and a mall right across the street.” The group’s only offsite event was held at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood, located 20 minutes away via busses. “We’re going back this year because we had such an amazing experience,” she says. “They have every kind of set you can imagine; we’re going to be on the Midwest set this year.”
