Salt Lake County welcomes Holding's offer

Salt Lake County officials say they're happy to entertain Utah billionaire Earl Holding's offer of a free downtown site near his hotels for a new convention center alongside the standing proposition of constructing a new, mega-hotel near the Salt Palace.

Both ideas seek to attract more convention business to Salt Lake City by putting a large-scale accommodation facility in close proximity to a convention venue — a model that has been successful in other Western cities using a public-private financing scheme.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said Wednesday that the proposition adds another voice, and another possibility, for the county's newly formed convention hotel headquarters advisory committee to evaluate.

"It is certainly something we can discuss in the conversation," Corroon said. "We're trying to look at this topic from different angles, and (Holding's) offer … is a valid one."

Salt Lake County Council Chairman Joe Hatch said he was surprised to hear that the property, which has been unsuccessfully pursued by a variety of different agencies for different uses during the past decade, was being offered by Holding.

"It is a total change for (Holding)," Hatch said. "In the past, they wanted to be the developer and do the work on their own time frame, but … this offer is definitely something that should be out there for discussion."

Hatch said he wanted to hear more details on the idea, specifically questioning whether the development on Holding's property would be a facility complementary to the Salt Palace, or a replacement.

"My initial gut reaction to the idea is why would we devalue the tremendous investment the public has made in our current facility," Hatch said. "Clearly, though, it does accomplish the same goal as the hotel idea … a convention hotel right next door to a convention center."

The concept of siting sizeable (1,000 room-plus) hotels near convention centers — and accomplishing the goal with hefty input of taxpayer dollars, usually in the form of municipal bonds — has been accomplished in recent years in Phoenix, Denver, Baltimore and Austin, Texas, with another project under way in Dallas.

The head of Denver's convention and visitors' bureau said their project — a convention center expansion and construction of a 1,100-room Hyatt Hotel completed in 2005 — has been a hit.

"The new facility gives us a host of advantages that we didn't have before it was built," said Rich Grant, spokesman for Visit Denver. "We would never have hosted the Democratic National Convention (last year) without it."

Residents of Dallas voted approval for about $300 million in bonding measures in early May that will go toward a $356 million, 1,100-room hotel near their convention center, which is undergoing a $60 million makeover. Both projects will be completed in 2012. Phillip Jones, chief executive officer of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Wednesday that the project was championed by a broad-based, bipartisan coalition including the Dallas city council and Mayor Tom Leppert. Jones said a study conducted at the behest of the city about 18 months ago concluded that lost convention business was tied directly to the lack of a convention hotel.

"We surveyed clients who chose not to book their conventions in Dallas," Jones said. "Over 100 groups listed their biggest reason for booking somewhere else as the lack of a large facility near the convention center."

Jones said of 1.2 million room-nights booked for future dates in Dallas, 400,000 were clearly contingent on the hotel project.

Jones added that the most vocal and aggressive opposition to the project came from the operators of a 1,600-room hotel that was located about three miles from the convention center.

E-MAIL: araymond@desnews.com