Jun. 13--FORT WORTH, Texas--Four developers have made the short list to bid on the city's 400-room Convention Center hotel, a $70 million to $80 million project that officials hope will further revive the southern end of downtown. 

Public Events Director Kirk Slaughter and other city officials would not release the names of the developers or their partners Tuesday, but said that the city's Economic Development Committee had chosen the teams from a list of six. 

The developers, who answered the city's "request for qualifications" several weeks ago, teamed up with well-known hotel chains and operators including Sheraton, Westin, Hilton, Remington and Crestline hotels, Slaughter said. 

Officials said Tuesday that they hope to select a development team by Labor Day and to have the hotel open in late 2003 or early 2004. The ambitious timetable has been made necessary by the Convention Center's scheduled March 2003 completion date. 

"We're going to have a vastly different Convention Center by the time this is all complete," Slaughter said. "We're going to have a different type of organization coming here, and those groups have come to expect a Convention Center hotel for their events." 

Improvements to the city's Convention Center, including how to tie it to the underused Fort Worth Water Gardens nearby, dominated meeting agendas at City Hall on Tuesday. 

City officials are considering whether to fund a $3 million to $3.5 million Events Plaza in the gardens that would be ideal for receptions and would make the two landmarks "seamless." 

"The Water Gardens are truly a diamond in the rough," Planning Director Fernando Costa said. "The idea would be to make it so you don't really know where it begins and the Convention Center ends." 

Billionaire businessman and civic leader Ed Bass, co-chairman of the Water Gardens Study Committee with Ruth Carter Stevenson, attended the work session Tuesday to lobby for improvements to the urban park. 

Bass and others plan to form a nonprofit organization to manage the Water Gardens under a contract with the city. They said the area needs improved entrances, traffic circulation and maintenance. The recommendations are similar to those made by a team of experts who analyzed the park during a three-day urban design workshop in May 2000. 

The Bass Foundation and the Amon G. Carter Foundation have funded more than $650,000 worth of design studies on the Water Gardens. On Tuesday, Bass thanked the city for its interest and willingness to improve the area. 

"I think this is a great public-private partnership in that two foundations have been able to facilitate all the design work," he said. 

Although officials estimate that the annual maintenance costs for the Water Gardens will jump from $366,100 to a little more than $545,000, no firm estimates for all the improvements were available Tuesday. 

Council members said the revitalization effort was a priority. 

"An enormous amount of work has gone into getting us to this point," Mayor Kenneth Barr said. "The Water Gardens is a work of art, a truly magnificent work of art. We have an opportunity now to really open this up -- and we need to take better care of it." 

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(c) 2001, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.