Aug. 5, 2003 - The price tag to expand Bartle Hall is getting bigger.

A list of improvements ranging from new carpeting to more parking garages has been added to the project, mushrooming cost estimates to more than $186 million. Some of those items are designed to assist development of the planned performing arts center next door to Bartle.

Meanwhile, a lingering travel and tourism tailspin in a still-wobbly economy is eroding city hotel revenue needed to help pay for the project.

A voter-approved 15 percent increase in Kansas City's hotel tax took effect Jan. 1. But collections through April tumbled almost 9 percent compared with the same period in 2001 -- the industry's last good year before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While the travel recession gnaws at revenue, mushrooming costs are causing worry lines on the brows of officials in charge of the Bartle project.

"We do have a serious shortfall," said City Architect Tom Bean, a member of the city's Convention Center Ballroom Expansion Oversight Committee. "But I don't think we're in trouble yet."

Last November, voters approved bumping the city's hotel tax by a penny to 7.5 cents on the dollar and the restaurant tax by a quarter-cent to 2 cents on the dollar.

At the time, city officials portrayed the Bartle ballot issue as a $74 million package. Campaign fliers touted the user-tax increases as a small price to pay for a new ballroom, new "convenient parking" and a technologically updated convention center that would draw more and bigger conventions.

Voters said yes. But now, as officials crunch the numbers, the price estimate has swelled to nearly $186.8 million.

Much of the increase traces back to the City Council's pledge last December to provide up to $60 million in assistance for a $304 million performing arts center at the south end of Bartle Hall.

"The performing arts center has been a dream of a number of people for a long time, and the city needs the project," said Councilman Charles Eddy, also chairman of the council's Bartle expansion committee.

"Because of their proximity, the two projects have to be coordinated," he said. "The land acquisition and the parking is where the big numbers (increase) came from."

Current estimates call for up to $15 million to acquire land controlled by backers of the arts center, plus at least $18 million for a 950-car performing arts center garage. Another nearly $40 million, 2,000-car garage under the new ballroom addition would be shared with arts patrons and, somehow, co-financed with them.

Meanwhile, the backers of the arts center, led by philanthropist Julia Irene Kauffman, have proposed creating a tax increment financing district, which could be used to help finance public improvements such as garages.

How it all gets paid for is still a work in progress. An oversight meeting is scheduled for early next week.

"There are a series of issues in negotiations with the arts center -- parking, alignment of 16th Street, common utilities," Bean said. "Everything's on the table. Nothing is resolved."

For Eddy and other City Hall insiders, the funding shortfall and expanding construction program come as no surprise.

"We have known from the beginning that we would be short on funding," Eddy told oversight committee members at a July 14 meeting.

The voter-approved hotel and restaurant tax increases are expected to generate a little more than half the money for the expanded project, according to estimates prepared by city consultants McCown Gordon Konrath.

According to minutes of a recent meeting, Eddy cautioned that "this entire issue will be confusing to voters, who believe that they have already voted the funds necessary for the entire project."

Consultants two years ago advised the city to add a larger ballroom and banquet facility to Bartle Hall to remain competitive with other venues.

A new and elegant 40,000-square-foot structure -- expected to accommodate banquet seating for 3,000 -- would be linked to Bartle's southeast corner north of 16th Street between Central and Wyandotte streets.

Other expansion elements include an outdoor plaza and fountain, new underground parking and cosmetic and technology upgrades.

Like the last addition to Bartle Hall completed in 1994, the ballroom flowing into the outdoor plaza would be constructed partly above the downtown freeway loop. The southern end of the expansion would land on property controlled by the performing arts center group.

The ballroom and plaza are intended to create an inviting pedestrian link across the freeway and into the emerging Freight House District, where trendy art galleries and restaurants stretch south toward Science City at Union Station and the shops at Crown Center.

Officials say the ambitious projects create a synergy that is a key to future development downtown. But they also acknowledge the financial and political difficulties in pursuing that vision.

"The last thing we want to do is cost taxpayers more money," Eddy said. "But what the voters need to understand, and what we need to get across to them, is that this is a large project and we need to do it right.

"It makes no sense to spend $95 million and expand Bartle Hall for the third time and not do additional parking."

The soft economy is partly to blame for the funding shortfall. But a low interest rate climate created by the soft economy also is sparking debate about whether to borrow more money to fill financing holes.

Some say the easiest way might be to add Bartle improvements to an omnibus city ballot issue tentatively expected for April 2004. That ballot question would fund a laundry list of city projects now under discussion, including street and bridge repairs and replacing septic systems with city sewer service.

"It's no secret we're looking at a general obligation bond issue for next spring," Eddy said.

But Mayor Kay Barnes and City Manager Wayne Cauthen appear cool to the idea of lumping in Bartle with other priorities.

"I would not favor that," Barnes said last week. "I don't want anyone to get ahead of the game."

If funding isn't readily available, another option is to cut back on the project. Indeed, a similar debate raged during the last Bartle expansion in 1994. In the end, numerous items were cut from the project -- including a new ballroom.

"We may have to slow down the process, the scope of work we'd like to get done, as quickly as we'd like it to get done," Barnes said.

Eddy expects the council to debate how to plug financial holes for the Bartle project this fall. But there are limits to how many cuts he's willing to take.

"I'd rather hold off and slow the project down than build it wrong," Eddy said.

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(c) 2003, The Kansas City Star, Mo. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.