The crowd fills the Long Beach Arena during a Women’s Conference event in 2010. Photo courtesy the Women’s Conference.
UPDATE 12:45pm | Officials with the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau said today that the conference will not relocate and will certainly be canceled this year. They are not concerned with the financial impact of losing the conference – the event is usually in October, which is a busy month anyway – but say that the true loss is cultural. The conference provided a bright spotlight on the city each year.
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10:47am | California First Lady Anne Brown announced this week that she will not host the Women’s Conference in Long Beach in 2011, ending an annual tradition that began in the 1980’s and in recent years had grown exponentially.
The loss could be a significant hit to Long Beach financially. The city received more than $5 million from the conference and associated events in 2010.
“I will focus my immediate energies on the challenges before our state and won’t try to recreate the conference that Maria put on in Long Beach,” Brown said in a statement.
It is unclear if the conference will be relocated, or if it is being canceled outright this year.
Under former First Lady Maria Shriver, the conference blossomed into a four-day event that raised thousands for charities and drew First Lady Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor and countless other celebrities.