May 9--MANALAPAN, Fla.--The $80 million Palm Beach County Convention Center being built on Okeechobee Boulevard will open next year without a hotel. 

Plans for a scaled-down 350-room hotel next to the convention center on land controlled by CityPlace are on hold until the finance market improves -- which could be as long as a year and a half, the hotel's developer said Wednesday. 

"Hotel financing completely dried up post-9/11," said Ron Wackrow, head of Related Lodging, the hotel arm of CityPlace developer The Related Group. Wackrow spoke to a crowded luncheon meeting of the Palm Beach County Hotel and Lodging Association at The Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan. 

Related has talked about selling condos on the hotel's top floors "to buy down the cost of the hotel," Wackrow said, but condominium financing is hard to get because so many residential units are being built near downtown West Palm Beach. 

"Lenders don't like it," he said. "The only way you can do the rest of the (hotel) financing is if the condo market comes back." 

Tourism officials have long said a hotel is key to the convention center's success. 

But convention center manager Ken Foster said Wednesday he's adjusted his marketing to appeal to smaller groups, or to groups that don't mind staying in several nearby hotels. 

"We know we won't have a hotel for maybe three years," Foster said. "But there are adequate rooms in a 3-mile radius. 

"Some groups will accept being in several hotels, and some won't. But we're developing a transportation system that will provide a comfort level" for convention-goers, who will have 23,000 square feet of meeting rooms to gather in, a 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall and a 25,000-square-foot ballroom. 

The convention center will rely on the nearby 349-room Sheraton, and other hotels on Australian Avenue, Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard and in Palm Beach, Foster said. The Airport Hilton is adding 100 rooms in the next few years, he said, and the Best Western on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard "has an interest in taking the existing hotel down and building a new, upscale one." 

Related's lease with West Palm Beach calls for a hotel to be under construction within a year after the convention center opens. If not, the county has the option of buying the land and finding its own hotel developer. CityPlace lawyer Lyn Harris told the meeting Wednesday the land is appraised "in the $11 million range." 

Based on Wackrow's estimation of when hotel financing conditions will improve, Related could still meet the timetable to start building a hotel. The convention center should be finished by the end of July 2003, Mac McLaughlin, president of the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the hoteliers meeting Wednesday. 

That means Related would have to start building its hotel by July 2004, 14 months from now -- within the 18-month financing timetable Wackrow laid out Wednesday. 

It takes about two years to design and build a hotel, so one might open in August 2006 under that scenario. 

"For that particular group (Related) financing is difficult," convention center manager Foster said, "but we've heard from other hotels that it's possible." 

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(c) 2002, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. MAR,