May 3--A Seattle-based firm has revived plans to build a golf and hotel resort with a city conference center on the Estes Peninsula at Joe Pool Lake. 

Wildflower Hotel Resorts Ltd. expects to lay out financing and development plans by September and start building by year's end. 

Still, some city officials are containing their enthusiasm for the project, citing seven years of unrealized dreams as multiple development groups failed to get similar projects off the ground. 

"We're not going to get out in front of this and start blowing trumpets," said Tom Cox, deputy city manager in Grand Prairie. "So many people have taken a run at it and nothing happened." 

He's hopeful that Wildflower, under president Raymond J. Goad, can make the project happen, he said. 

"He's had some experience in doing this before. There's been some real money paid out and that's encouraging," Mr. Cox said. "But I guess I would use the phrase 'cautiously optimistic.'" 

City officials reassigned a 99-year lease for a four-star hotel with golf courses, a marina and a conference center on the peninsula to Wildflower after the Estes Park Development Corp. failed to make three payments and defaulted on the lease agreement it entered in 1999. 

Wildflower paid the city the nearly $1 million in back payments this spring for the right to assume the lease and develop the property. 

An additional payment of about $275,000 and plans for development and financing are due to the city in September, council member Jim Swafford said. 

"If everything is in order and gets approved, his next benchmark would be to begin construction by the end of the year," Mr. Swafford said. 

Mr. Goad was formerly vice president and general counsel for Westin Hotel company. In that position, he was involved in the redevelopment and expansion of the Mauna Kea Beach Resort in Hawaii. 

"This guy is not out here poking holes in the sky hoping something will fall out," Mr. Swafford said. "This guy's got money in the bank and hoping to do this deal." 

City officials plan to build a 50,000-square-foot conference center adjacent to the hotel. The proposed conference center would be operated by the hotel management. 

The Estes Peninsula is part of nearly 3,000 acres of lake-area property the city took over last summer from the Trinity River Authority, which had leased the land from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

Efforts to develop a resort on the peninsula date back at least to 1995, when Singletary Golf Services and DePalma Hotel Corp. presented plans for the Hawk's Ridge resort. The developers never secured financing for the project. 

In 1998, Lee Singletary, owner of a Plano-based golf course development company, resurfaced with new partners, who had formed the Estes Park Development Corp. 

Mr. Goad was president of Estes Park Development but left after an internal shakeup, Mr. Swafford said. 

Estes Park also failed to find financing for the project, estimated to be cost $123 million. The company failed to make two lease payments to the Trinity River Authority, which controlled the land at the time. 

When the city took over the lake area property, the developers again missed a payment. 

City officials considered foreclosing on the property when Mr. Goad approached them about reassigning the lease to Wildflower. 

Mr. Singletary, who is no longer involved in the peninsula project, said he still believes it would be viable. 

"I think the piece of property it's proposed to be on is extremely strategic, not only in the metroplex but in the entire development genre for these types of resort projects," Mr. Singletary said. 

"The proximity to D/FW Airport, the fact that it's sticking out on the peninsula of this beautiful lake � and there's no other site like that � that's why I was attracted to it from the beginning." 

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(c) 2002, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.