[CORRECTED VERSION]
This weekend more than three-dozen gem shows will get underway around town. The thousands of rock, gem, mineral and fossil dealers who flock to Tucson for the first two weeks of every February comprise the largest annual gathering of such dealers in the world.
In this undated Tucson Citizen file photo, Phil Scalisi from Boston looking over the Kristalle Minerals & Gold Specimens display at the gem show inside the TCC. Phil said that he has been coming to the gem show in Tucson for the past 30 years.
Colloquially known as the Tucson Gem Show, it has been an economic boon to Tucson for more than 50 years with some analyses claiming it generates more than $100 million annually for the metropolitan area.
But for the past couple of years there has been a lot of speculation and hand wringing about the future of the gem show in Tucson. The American Gem Trade Association, which hosts one of the largest wholesale shows, is unhappy.
The AGTA has been hosting its wholesale show at the Tucson Convention Center since the early 1990s but it has outgrown the space. The AGTA and others have been promised a renovated and expanded convention center for more than a decade but improvements to TCC became embroiled in the Rio Nuevo debacle. It’s unlikely improvements to the TCC will be completed within the next five years.
Frustrated, the AGTA show organizer has suggested the show might leave Tucson for a more accommodating city and better facilities.
That suggestion has caused some local politicians to whip the community into a panicky lather in an attempt to force action on the TCC. They have claimed that the TCC must be improved now or we risk losing the gem show.
But there is no monolithic show. There are more than 40 shows spread around town. While the TGMS main show used to be the sun in which all the other satellite shows revolved, it is now just one of many and the only one that’s affected by the TCC.
It is the biggest and most important, to be sure, but it is unlikely if not improbable that if the AGTA were to leave for Phoenix or Las Vegas, or wherever, that the 40 or so other show producers and the more than 5,000 dealers they represent would pack up and follow.
What is likely is that an attempt to move the gem show as it is now composed would result in killing the expo as competing show producers and dealers bicker over where to go or even whether to go. You could end up with some shows in one or more other cities and some shows still here.
Expanding and improving the TCC is in this community’s best interest, not just to make the gem show people happy, but also to attract larger and more frequent convention business to town.
What’s more, we should be just as concerned with the happiness of the 40 or more other show producers and the quality of their venues.
So as the shows get underway this week, lets dial back the “We could lose the gem show” rhetoric and instead work together to solve our common problem without making threats that no one wants, nor probably intends to keep.