Feb. 19--From the perspective of the University of Missouri-Columbia, a plan to put a hotel and convention center on the southeast corner of campus makes perfect sense. 

The idea is to lease vacant land northwest of College Avenue and Stadium Boulevard to a private hotel developer and use the proceeds to kick off a campaign for an adjacent performing arts center, which is in MU's master plan. 

"That would work in real well, we think," said Kee Groshong, MU's vice chancellor for administrative services. 

Less excited are private hotel operators, who worry about the effect a property of that size would have on the hospitality market, which some believe already is overbuilt. 

"Convention centers all over the nation are failing in huge numbers," said Ed Baker, a partner in the Holiday Inn Select Executive Center, the city's only existing convention center. "That concept doesn't work, that you build a convention center and they will come." 

The university is releasing neither the identity of the interested developer nor other details, other than to say that MU's hotel and restaurant management program would try to work with the convention center in some way. 

Administrators plan to send a request for proposals to competing developers this spring. Other universities have convention centers near campus, and some developers, such as Springfield-based John Q. Hammons Hotels, have been adept at negotiating favorable real estate terms with public entities. 

That worries Baker, who said the convention facilities at his 311-room hotel sit vacant well more than half the year. He speculates that, given the cost to build hotels these days, the demand isn't there for another convention center to survive in Columbia without a public subsidy. "Neither one would make it, but one would be subsidized by the government," he said, "which is totally wrong." 

Lorah Steiner, director of the Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau, agrees that Baker would have a valid complaint if a public subsidy were involved. But she has a more bullish outlook on the local convention market. 

"My gut level reaction is, yes, we could accommodate another full-service meeting facility with substantial convention space," she said, cautioning that her office has not done a study of local demand. "That's only anecdotal." 

Even so, she said, the Executive Center would have an advantage because there are several other hotels within walking distance, making it more convenient for large groups to hold a gathering there. 

The lack of available land for hotel development around the campus convention center site might limit its ability to attract groups larger than a few hundred, even though the Hearnes Center and the planned $75 million new basketball arena would be within walking distance. The only existing hotel in the area is the 100-room Campus Inn. 

"Even if you build a 300-room hotel and 25,000 square feet of meeting space, you have to have other rooms around it," Steiner said. "Having 60 percent of attendees at that property and 40 percent three miles away wouldn't be perfect." 

Much of the local convention business comes from the university itself. MU's Conference Office alone books some 100 conferences a year. Director Joy Millard estimates about 25 of them are held at the Executive Center. 

Millard said she tries to book her office's educational events -- everything from cheerleading camps to swine farmer seminars -- at university facilities, but many events are too big or the availability isn't there. 

"I'd love to have that kind of facility," she said of a campus convention center. "That's one of our biggest deficits." 

The university project is the latest in a string of hotel projects to be proposed or to come on line in recent years. Columbia has 2,692 rooms now, not including 80 at Candlewood Suites on Keene Street, which is scheduled to open next month. 

Jefferson City developer Ted Stewart plans to build a 128-room Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites conference center at Peach Tree Plaza, and a 95-room Extended Stay America is planned at Interstate 70 and Stadium Boulevard near Cosmo Park. 

"It's hard to imagine how Columbia will continue to absorb all the additional hotel rooms," Campus Inn co-owner Wallace McNeill said, "but as long as there are banks out there willing to lend money to people who want to build hotel rooms that aren't needed, someone will build them." 

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(c) 2002, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.