ShowBiz Expo battles for space at convention center: duo says they're blocked by out-of-towners' shows.

On the surface, ShowBiz Expo would seem to be the perfect event for the Los Angeles Convention Center.

With the entertainment industry based here, the trade show seems to be a good opportunity to spotlight its importance. Last year the event drew 20,000 and it's expected to pack 30,000 into the convention center June 5-7.

However, the show does not impress convention center officials and may be given the boot after its 1994 run. Convention center booking policies prohibit booking the center's space more than two years in advance for non-national events, such as a local trade show like ShowBiz Expo.

The center is trying to book national shows because they bring in out-of-towners to fill up the downtown hotels which provide the city with bed tax revenue. ShowBiz Expo's organizers have been given a tentative date for 1995 but could get dropped if a national convention or show is booked.

ShowBiz Expo organizers say the rules aren't fair to them because the show is an important economic stimulus for the city and is becoming an international event drawing more out-of-towners.

Bob and Nalini Lasiewicz, ShowBiz' producers, want to book the convention center for the next 10 years but have been allowed to book only for this year and next. They said they have considered taking the Expo to Long Beach or Anaheim but would go to one of those locales only as a last resort.

The Los Angeles Convention Center and the Convention and Visitors Bureau have already lined up 16 conventions and trade shows over the next 13 months. In the past the center was too small to host major conventions but the expansion now makes Los Angeles competitive with regional rivals, Las Vegas, San Diego and San Francisco, officials claim.

The Lasiewiczes have been complaining about the convention center's policy since 1991 because they lost tentative bookings twice before. In 1991 they were forced to "put up with inadequate space" and in 1992 actually booked the Long Beach Convention Center. When a cancellation at the L.A. facility occurred, they were penciled in 10 months before the event.

The change in location created logistical problems and was costly, the Lasiewiczes say. They say that without booking their event more than two years out, planning is difficult. They added they want the ability to book well into the future to end these uncertainties.

The center is now bound by a L.A. law passed by the city council which established booking policies. The council's action came last summer in anticipation of the convention center's expansion from 373,000 square feet to 810,000 square feet. The expansion is expected to be completed this fall.

The new policy does allow six non-national events to be booked 10 years out but sets a restriction which ShowBiz Expo doesn't meet. These shows must have generated $400,000 for the center in the most recent event year.

The Lasiewiczes claim the city council's new booking policy doesn't adequately define "local shows" and they want to establish a review board to discuss problems and exceptions to the rules. Changing the policy, however, will take an act of the city council.

They say the new booking policy was passed before they were allowed a chance to be heard. It was approved shortly after last April's riots and very few of the affected parties were given notice to make public comments, they claim.

They have appealed to Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas to initiate changes in the booking policies that would grant them an exception to the two-year booking limit. One of their arguments is that other local shows, such as the auto, gift, art and Westec shows, all have 10-year contract options.

Bob Lasiewicz said there have been cases in other cities where booking policies have been challenged in court and changed, but he isn't planning to use that tactic here.

Nalini Lasiewicz complained, "We were penciled in for 1996 by the convention center's sales people but if a visitors bureau booking came in, we would be pushed aside. To make things worse, the two sales forces (the center's and the bureau's) aren't hooked up and interactive."

This makes planning impossible for the show producers who need to stage their show in June, the Lasiewiczes said. June is good time to hold ShowBiz Expo because is then comes after other entertainment industry events such as the Cannes Film Festival in May and the American Film Market in March, they say. They produce a similar show in New York in January.

Convention bureau officials are not too sympathetic about the Lasiewiczes' plight.

Charles Woolf, director of marketing for the convention center, said the reason for expanding the convention center was to bring in large out-of-town conventions which would generate bed taxes for the city.

"ShowBiz Expo uses a large portion of the center and generates good revenues and we're glad to have it," Woolf said. "But it doesn't generate those 12.5 percent bed tax revenues. For the city, it's purely economics.'"

The issue shouldn't be purely economics, according to some. Jack Kyser, chief economist in the county's Economic Development Corporation, said entertainment is a key growing segments of the region's economy and the area can't afford to lose any slices of it.

"Long Beach would love to get this show and if it went to Vegas, ouch, it would be a major loss," Kyser said. "There are other factors than just filling hotel rooms."

The 1993 show will host more than 400 exhibitors who range from state film commissions to technical companies offering sound stages and computer equipment. The Los Angeles and New York shows generate $2 million for their company, Live Time, Inc.