Aug. 29--Since the Statehouse Convention Center opened after a $23 million expansion three years ago, it has hosted events from dances to annual meetings. But so far it's missing the big event: the downtown renaissance. 

Occupying a stretch of downtown riverfront near the River Market, the Peabody Little Rock hotel and the new Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce building, the convention center got a multimillion-dollar makeover after Little Rock voters passed a sales tax in 1995 to double its size. 

Its 90,000-square-foot expansion, opened in June 1999, made the building one of the most visible emblems of the continuing investment along the riverfront. 

But while the Statehouse Convention Center's square footage has grown, its bookings have stagnated. 

A victim, to a degree, of a struggling economy and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that curbed travel and threw a wet blanket over U.S. tourism, the center also has suffered from the distractions of continuing construction, its officials said. But they say the center is still positioned to capitalize on its added space. 

Barry Travis, the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau chief executive officer, called business "relatively flat" since the expansion. In 1999, the center booked 283 events and had 130,642 patrons. Last year it again had 283 events, and the number of patrons climbed to 134,321. 

Using standard multipliers to estimate how much visitors spend on everything from hotel rooms to cab fare, the bureau estimates the center's direct economic impact at $40.7 million in 2001, down from $50.4 million in 2000. 

Travis acknowledged Wednesday that business is not where he thought it would be. 

In the months before the August 1995 election on the temporary 1 percent sales tax, the bureau estimated that the city lost about $78 million in convention business because the Statehouse was too small. 

"The business is out there wanting to come," Travis said at the time. "All we've got to do is give them a place to meet." 

The convention center's staff Wednesday could point to few such events now on the schedule. 

Asked for examples, Gay Brown, director of convention sales, cited the National Association of Free Will Baptists convention that is expected to draw 8,000 people to the center in 2007 and the League of Latin American Citizens national convention, expected to attract 3,000 to 5,000 people in 2005. 

Brown could cite no events, however, that have already taken place at the center that would have been too large for it to accommodate before. 

But without the extra space, she said, the center risked losing its biggest annual event, the American Taekwondo Association's annual Songahm Taekwondo world championship. It attracts about 5,000 every June. 

"They told us they would have had to search for a larger venue because they were being courted by other cities with larger venues," Brown said. An official for the association confirmed that. 

Meanwhile, the National Association of Free Will Baptists, which held its conventions in Little Rock in 1984 and 1994, could come only because of the extra space, Brown said. 

"As soon as they learned we expanded, they rebooked Little Rock in 2007," she said. 

Besides opening the center to an expanded roster of potential clients -- some 600 large events that it couldn't hope to land before -- the expansion allows the center to schedule events simultaneously, Travis said. And the center has taken advantage of that capacity. 

Still, Travis conceded that most of the benefits of the expansion lie in the future. 

He had thought it would be sooner. In a November 2000 interview, he pointed to 2002 as a big year. 

One factor that has delayed progress has been the disruption caused by construction in the adjoining Peabody hotel. The construction transformed the sagging Arkansas' Excelsior Hotel into the luxurious Peabody, but the work has made it difficult to sell a finished product to potential clients, Travis said. 

The Peabody renovation came hard on the heels of the center's construction work, he said, continuing a distraction that has not helped marketing. 

"We've been in a mode of construction for several years here," Travis said. 

Nearly seven months after the hotel unveiled its $40 million renovation, crews are still renovating meeting space in the hotel, Travis said. 

"They're still driving nails in that part of the facility," he said. 

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the economic recession also haven't helped the convention trade, he said. Passenger counts at Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, have been down 12 percent to 15 percent this year, according to airport spokesman Phil Launius, who has said business travel has been especially weak. 

Hotels across the country are reporting slower business. 

The average hotel occupancy rate was 60.6 percent through the first seven months of 2002, down 3.1 percent from the corresponding period the year before, according to Smith Travel Research. 

The Hendersonville, Tenn., research firm tracks the lodging industry. 

In Little Rock, hotel occupancy rates trailed the national average. Through July, the Little Rock rate stood at 58.4 percent, according to Smith Travel Research's surveys. 

Generally, convention hotels have suffered more than hotels that do not rely as much on big groups traveling to big cities for meetings, said Robert Mandelbaum, director of research for the Hospitality Research Group in Atlanta, another hotel consulting firm. 

"A lot of conventions were outright canceled after Sept. 11," Mandelbaum said. 

At the Statehouse Convention Center, however, only one event -- a cat show -- was canceled after the terror attacks, although Travis said crowds at some other events were thinned. 

With U.S. convention hotels -- generally considered those with 400 to 500 rooms and ample meeting space -- taking a hit from economic woes, Little Rock's bellwether Capital Hotel and Doubletree Hotel closed 2001 with their highest revenues in at least five years, according to figures from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which collects a tax on hotel rooms and food sales. 

The Peabody, meanwhile, reported $7.9 million in revenue through July, which puts the hotel on a pace to easily surpass the highest numbers the hotel reported over the past five years as the Excelsior. 

Rick Ammons, director of sales for the Peabody, did not return a message seeking comment on the hotel's performance and its reliance on the convention center. 

But the reopening of the hotel under the Peabody banner, along with the Clinton presidential library and Heifer International village, both under construction, will bring more energy downtown, and the Statehouse Convention Center is at last poised to capitalize, Travis said. 

One problem: So is Hot Springs. 

The Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center is undergoing an expansion that will make it bigger than the Statehouse when it opens in late 2003. Within an easy drive of Little Rock, there is no doubt that the center competes with Little Rock for the meeting trade, although tourism officials in the two cities say they also work together to benefit each other, as well as the rest of the state. 

Steve Arrison, executive director of the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission, said Hot Springs relies on Little Rock's airport as well as its own and hopes also to gain from the capital's downtown resurgence. Visitors to the Clinton library, for instance, could stay in Hot Springs as easily as Little Rock. 

The Hot Springs convention center has been increasing its business steadily since it was expanded in 1998, although the numbers are flat so far this year, Arrison said. 

The center will benefit from a large Harley-Davidson Owners Group convention next month, with an expected 7,000 Harley riders. 

A reflection of the city's overall tourism business, collection of Hot Springs' 3 percent hotel and restaurant tax is up 1.4 percent through the first seven months of the year, Arrison said. 

In Little Rock, the Convention and Visitors Bureau can point to steady gains in the city's 2 percent gross-receipts tax on restaurants and hotels. 

Collections have climbed each of the past five years. In 1997, the tax generated $5.57 million. Last year it was $6.7 million. Through July, collections were at $4.1 million. 

As development along the riverfront continues, it can't help but lift the Statehouse, too, said Travis, who brought in a new chief marketing officer, Dan O'Byrne, from Orlando, Fla., two weeks ago to lead the sales efforts. 

Travis said, "2003 ought to be a real busy, busy year from a selling perspective. ... It is going to be here. I'll promise you that." 

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(c) 2002, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.