ANAHEIM This city is making a bid to attract Comic-Con from its home base in San Diego to the Anaheim Convention Center starting in 2013.
City officials confirmed Tuesday that they have submitted a proposal to Comic-Con board members, who have toured the Anaheim Convention Center in recent weeks.
Comic-Con International, which began 40 years ago as a small convention attracting comic-book fans and science-fiction aficionados, has grown into one of the region's largest annual conventions, routinely attracting more than 120,000 attendees...
DENIS POROY, AP
Movie studios and TV executives flock to the convention to offer previews of potential blockbusters and create buzz about new television series that they think will appeal to such a crowd...
Anaheim officials say they offer many advantages, including a more central Southern California location and closer proximity to the Hollywood studios and Los Angeles-area television headquarters...
The Anaheim Convention Center has 815,000 square-feet of convention space, compared to about 550,000 square feet in San Diego, Ahlers said.
Anaheim has more affordable hotel rooms and more rooms within walking distance of the convention space, compared to San Diego, he added...
"That would be a great time for us," Ahlers said. "The parks (Disneyland Resort) fill up many hotel rooms during that time, but with this we'd be booked solid."
The San Diego Convention Center clearly wants to keep Comic-Con. The corporation that operates it recently submitted a proposal to the Comic-Con board to keep the convention at least through 2015.
And in response to strong competition that also includes Las Vegas and Los Angeles, three San Diego hotels near the convention center offered to provide free meeting space – 300,000 square feet, in all – to the convention for 2013 through 2015, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.
Phinehas-This is great news for me. Anaheim is 20 minutes from my house. San Diego is an hour and a half on a good day.