A hotel magnate named Ben Bethel is running for the City Council in Phoenix. I don't know much about Mr. Bethel and his page of proposals to make Phoenix a better place is full of the kind of grand, "Wouldn't that be great?" ideas that most candidates for office have. If and when such candidates are elected, they wind up abandoning most, struggling to get 5% or 10% of their proposals implemented and declaring grand success if they succeed in one or two.
One of his proposals, which you can read in full if you scroll down that page, is to lure the Comic-Con International to Phoenix…as a six-day event that would commence each year on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Personally, I think this is about as likely as me hosting the con in my garage. I doubt the convention will move out of San Diego, at least in my lifetime…but if it did move, it would probably move to a town that offered more than just more room…
Phoenix can't offer more room. The San Diego Convention Center currently has 615,701 square feet of total exhibit space and when the current expansion plans are completed, it will have expanded by a third. The Phoenix Convention Center is about half that size. (And San Diego has just as many days to offer. If a six-day convention is ever feasible, you could have one in San Diego just as easily as anywhere else. I'd probably wind up hosting 23 panels.)
If you're interested in the expansion plans for the San Diego facility, they've set up this website to explain and tout them. I am still in awe of how much that once-little comic book convention — the one I first attended in a hotel basement in 1970 — has meant to that city and how it has spawned so much industry and employment. Mr. Bethel is correct that hosting the shindig in any city is a major economic boon. He's just wrong that it's ever going to happen in Phoenix, even if the state does rescind its ugly, minority-hassling laws. Thanks to Shane Shellenbarger for the link to Bethel's campaign page.