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Smallish convention center mulls a second expansion: supporters complain facility is much smaller than those in San Francisco, Las Vegas.

Article Excerpt
A brief, yet unmistakable endorsement of expanding the San Diego Convention Center by Mayor Jerry Sanders earlier this year alerted the facility's manager to begin updating her list of potential expansion sites and develop her case to stakeholders.

Carol Wallace, president and CEO of the San Diego Convention Center Corp., is identifying sites to expand, a list that has grown shorter in the last five years of downtown development.

"Room for expansion is tight," she said.

One possibility is building over the railroad tracks near the center, said Wallace, who hopes to complete an expansion by 2014. Undecided is how an expansion would be funded.

"In the past, money has come from industry and those who benefit such as the city, port and hotels," Wallace said. "There are a lot of beneficiaries when you bring in over a million people a year. I think the stakeholders have a stake in the industry."

She's also hoping that the next expansion can avoid the legal challenges experienced during the last expansion, which took 10 years...