Don't feed the white elephant

AIDED BY MAYOR Antonio Villaraigosa, downtown Los Angeles' boosters are poised to dip again into the pockets of taxpayers to help finance a splashy new project. The cost this time is up to $300 million in loans, tax breaks and fee waivers for a $750-million, 54-story complex -- including a 876-room Marriott Marquis, a posh 124-room Ritz-Carlton and 216 luxury condos -- across from the Convention Center.

The argument used to justify the handout is well-traveled in development circles: The project would create new jobs, higher tax revenues, more convention business, and it would further brighten the image of the city's central core. Taxpayers and L.A. business owners should be wary of such promises, however, particularly when it comes to the Convention Center.

Let's look at the record. The Convention Center has been a consistent money loser for years, costing the city $30 million annually in debt service. Even Villaraigosa calls it a "white elephant."

And this pachyderm has been to the public trough before. In 1988, the city financed a $500-million expansion of the center based on promises that a bigger and more modern facility would catapult L.A. into that elite circle of cities that thrive on the convention business.

More than 15 years later, the center continues to lose money -- debt service outstrips convention revenue -- and L.A. is still not on the list of the nation's top 10 convention cities and has little prospect of competing successfully against Las Vegas, New York and Orlando, which have far more attractions. According to one trade publication, L.A. hosted fewer major conventions last year than Indianapolis and Rosemont, Ill. But there's a bigger problem here.

The simple truth is that convention centers are rarely a good public investment. A definitive national study by the Brookings Institution, released last year, found that they frequently operate at a loss, including the recently expanded centers in Washington and St. Louis. In most cases, their much-ballyhooed effect on the local economy -- new private investment, more jobs and increased levels of tourism -- "has simply not occurred," reported Heywood Sanders, the study's author.

One problem is the convention business itself, Sanders noted. Overall attendance at the 200 largest trade shows -- the critical market for large convention centers -- has not grown measurably since 1993. Yet 44 cities -- including Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Washington and San Diego -- were building or expanding convention centers, some by subsidizing the construction of a convention hotel, a development Sanders compared to an "arms race" among cities.