San Jose Convention Center

in 2017 CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking at Facebook F8 in 2018 The convention center covers a total of , including of exhibit hall floor space, 43 meeting rooms, and two large ballrooms. There are entrances on West San Carlos Street, Almaden Boulevard, and South Market Street. The San Jose Hilton and Marriott hotels are both directly connected to the Main Hall. A two-story hallway connecting the three entrances is called the "Parkway" on the ground floor and the "Concourse" on the second floor. A recessed main entrance along West San Carlos Street features two prominent art installations. A tile mural by Lin Utzon (1988) adorns a façade surrounding the entrance. The two-story-tall mural, resembling a flock of birds in flight, consists of over 8,000 red, white, and black porcelain tiles manufactured by Royal Copenhagen. An interactive sculpture, Idea Tree by South Korean architect Soo-in Yang, stands in the plaza fronting the entrance. In the lobby hangs a 1993 life-size bronze and steel sculpture, Winged Guardian by Stephen De Staebler. The South Hall, a metal-framed fabric structure, adds another of exhibit space, for a joint total of . It can accommodate 11,428 people, or 5,333 people with exhibits. It is surrounded by a public parking lot on a site. City leaders have called for the South Hall's demolition at various times since it was erected in 2005 as a temporary structure; The South Hall's maintenance costs $38,000 each year, while demolition is estimated to cost at least $1 million. The convention center is accessible by public transportation. The Convention Center VTA light rail station is located directly in front of the convention center's main entrance on West San Carlos Street. The station is served by the Blue Line and Green Line. The station is two stops away from the intermodal San Jose Diridon station. The convention center is also served by VTA local and express bus routes, San Jose State University's free Downtown Area Shuttle (DASH), and a Bay Wheels bicycle sharing station across West San Carlos Street. ==History==

by South Korean artist Soo-in Yang , consisting of over 8,000 porcelain tiles manufactured by Royal Copenhagen. The first general-purpose event center in San Jose was the Santa Clara County Horticultural Society's Horticultural Hall, which operated for about 30 years from 1886 until the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds opened. Civic Auditorium served as the city's main events venue from its opening in 1933 as Municipal Auditorium. In 1957, voters approved a bond measure for the construction of a modern convention center. Construction on the Jay McCabe Convention Hall began in December 1952, and the facility opened in 1964 with the Loyal Order of Moose national convention. Blount Construction was the general contractor. The new convention center cost $ (equivalent to $ in ) to build, of which the San Jose Redevelopment Agency contributed $ ($). It opened in 1989. In its early years, the new convention center failed to meet attendance and revenue expectations. By 2002, many Silicon Valley businesses were choosing the much larger Moscone Center in San Francisco over the San Jose Convention Center due to the latter's limited space. A ballot measure to finance an expansion via a hotel tax failed to reach the required two-thirds majority to pass. In June 2005, Team San Jose built the South Hall, a $6.77 million, blue and white tent, adding of exhibit space. In 2009, local hotels agreed to a hotel tax increase to fund the convention center's renovation and expansion. On October 10, 2013, the convention center completed the $130 million project, which added on the site of the former Martin Luther King Jr. Library. The San José Public Library relocated its main branch to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on the San Jose State University campus. In 2018, SARA put the South Hall site up for sale. ==Events==

2017 in 2018 , the convention center hosted hundreds of events each year. • FanimeCon (since 2004) • Further Confusion • Nvidia GTC (2009–2010, 2012–2019, since 2024) • OffKai Expo (since 2025) Other notable events at the convention center have included: • Worldwide Developers Conference (1989–2002, 2017–2019) • Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (1993, 1996) • Silicon Valley Auto Show (1994–2020) • ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference (1997) • LinuxWorld Conference and Expo (1998) • World Science Fiction Convention (2002, 2018) • Game Developers Conference (2004, 2006) • RoboNexus (2005) • North American Bengali Conference (2009) • Big Wow! ComicFest (2011–2015) • Creative Convergence Silicon Valley (2013) • WrestleMania Axxess for WWE's WrestleMania 31 (2015) • GX3: Everyone Games (2015) • SiliCon (2016–2022) • Genesis 3, 4, 8, and 9 in 2016, 2017, 2022, and 2023 respectively; the final day of the tournament for 3, 4, and 8 occurred at City National Civic • Facebook F8 (2017–2019) • Crunchyroll Expo in August or September (2018, 2019, 2022) • TwitchCon (2018) • ARM DevSummit (2018–2019) • Games Done Quick Express (2018) • The NHL Fan Fair for the 2019 National Hockey League All-Star Game • Samsung Developer Conference (2019) • The Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour (2019) • Roblox Developers Conference (2024-2025) ==See also==