Silicon Valley's Expo ambitions
California wants one of its cities to host the 2020 World Expo, the event is a seminal one on the world calendar and is expected to draw in over 70 million visitors to Shanghai, the city currently hosting the exhibition, which last six months.
Schwarzenegger has been eager to get California involved for some time, arguing that hosting the event would bring in many visitors and generate spending in the local economy, which would create jobs and revenue and provide support to the state’s economy. The major challenge for California, however, has been finding a city to launch the bid, but using Moffet Field would solve that problem.
“We think it’s a transformative opportunity. It’s a game changer,” said Bill Berry to Silicon Valley news media.
The plan is to invest heavily in educational and research facilities on the airbase which would showcase the area’s position as a high-tech hub in the world, with many major research and development corporations located in Silicon Valley, such as Apple, HP, Intel, and many innovative companies like Facebook and Google.
Berry is the head of a partnership between the University of California, NASA and some other organisations that have already developed research and education sites on the former airbase, but want to see more investment to prop up the state’s Expo bid.
The airfield is still in operation as a private facility owned by NASA Ames Research Center, an agreement would therefore be worked out whereby large swathes of unused land would be leased by private developers for permanent buildings, while temporary structured would be erected over the runways.
Some of the airfields existing structures could be incorporated into the hosting of the major exhibition, such as the mammoth Hangar One, which remains one of the largest man-made structures in the United States with a ground area of ten football fields or eight acres. The hangar was built for the USS Macon, an airship which was just 20 feet shorter than the infamous Hindenburg.
The possibility of a California Expo bid would coincide with a major state rail project to see a high-speed railway established that would connect North and South California through the Central Valley region. It was just before he boarded a high-speed train in Shanghai that Schwarzenegger announced California’s intention to make a Expo bid, suggesting that the Governor is looking to the up-and-coming second superpower on ways to boost investment in a sagging economy.
Silicon Valley’s bid to host the 2020 World Expo faces a number of major challenges, chief of which is a lack of funding and massive competition domestically and from abroad.
California is facing a multi-billion dollar deficit which practically rules out any public funds for the project to make a bid, the financing and investment therefore needs to come entirely from the private sector, which will prove difficult in the current economy, despite the potential influx of visitors and spending.
Because of this, over-stretched public funds may well be needed.
“Right now we’re focused on gathering support from stakeholders,” Joe Arellano, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, a regional business group helping to develop the idea of a Expo bid. “Once we have a strong group helping to organize the bid we can start to make decisions about how an expo in Silicon Valley could be funded.”
Event organizers have until mid-2011 to put together a convincing proposal as the Paris-based Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) does not require cities to make a bid until 2011 at the earliest, while 2014 is the cutoff date. The Expo will have to run for at least 6 months.
In total, 18 cities have thus far made a bid or are considering making a bid to host the 2020 World Expo, including Brisbane Australia, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil and four cities in Thailand and two cities in Turkey, as well as five US cities (New York being the greatest domestic competition).
US bids to host the World Expo have not gone without a hitch in the past. In 1984 when New Orleans hosted the Expo the organizers went bankrupt and the exposition was a failure with just 7 million people visiting. In 1992 a Chicago bid went well until the government refused to provide any finance support, which resulted in a lack of confidence from the BIE.
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Silicon Valley's Expo ambitions
Moffet Field, a fairly unknown former military airbase in Silicon Valley near Mountain View and Sunnyvale, may become the centerpiece of the 2020 World Expo if Governor Schwarzenegger and other advocated of a California bid get their way.
California wants one of its cities to host the 2020 World Expo, the event is a seminal one on the world calendar and is expected to draw in over 70 million visitors to Shanghai, the city currently hosting the exhibition, which last six months. Read more
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