Schwarzenegger Pitches Bay Area 2020 World Expo

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A former United States Naval Air Station, Moffett Field is over 800 acres of federally owned land. Much of it is unused, including dozens of vacant Navy buildings that are soon going to be demolished for the university and NASA Research Park development. It is also home to NASA Ames Research Center, a U.S. Army and Air National Guard presence, numerous private companies and a lightly used but very large airfield.

While plans are far from being drawn, planning a world's fair for as many as 600,000 people a day could likely result in new infrastructure for not just the southwest corner of Moffett but "the entire place," Berry said.

The World Expo, formerly known as the World's Fair, is governed by the Bureau International des Expositions in Paris. The Expo 2010 Shanghai has attracted nearly 50 million visitors since it opened 132 days ago. It continues through the end of October.

London hosted the first World Expo in 1851. The event is held every five years and will take place in Milan in 2015.

Silicon Valley is up against numerous other areas vying to be the site, including the American cities of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.

The United States last hosted the event in New Orleans in 1984. The Bay Area has hosted it twice in San Francisco, in 1939-40 on Treasure Island and in 1915 in the Marina district. The Palace of Fine Arts is a remnant of the 1915 event, formally called the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.