On a day when the state Senate Select Committee on Sports and Entertainment was sniffing around the proposal to build a downtown football stadium, news spread that a medical association is pulling out of the L.A. Convention Center in 2014 over fears that construction for the NFL venue will rain on its parade.

The Society of Critical Care Medicine's “Congress” is out, and the stadium hasn't even been approved yet. The plan by Staples Center-owner Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) is to tear down the old West Hall of the Convention Center and build there while also replacing that space with new convention digs.

Nice, right? Except that, as critics have shouted …

… it could be a mess for the year or so in which the stadium is constructed and the West Hall is reconfigured. (Officials say the Convention Center's new addition will be done by the end of 2013).

Carol Martinez, the LA Inc's VP for media affairs, tells the Weekly the medical org planned to come back after the stadium and Convention Center redux were completed, however. (LA Inc is the L.A. convention and visitor's bureau and books most of the big conventions at the Center).

She tried to spin it in a positive light:

What we told our customers is, and what LA Live (AEG) told us is that there won't be any disruption in service [for conventions].

Meanwhile, the Society of Critical Care Medicine is headed to S.F. for 2014. Its CEO says he doesn't want to risk meeting amidst a construction mess if the West Hall redux goes off-schedule.

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