Last week’s recommendation that Kansas City should begin planning a 1,000-room headquarters hotel near Bartle Hall was deja vu all over again for developer Whitney Kerr Sr.

Kerr was intimately involved with Ross Perot Jr. in a tortuous effort during the early 1990s to build a 1,000-room hotel by the convention center. After several years of negotiations, the $124.5 million project collapsed in 1994 when it lost support from City Hall.

The new report by Convention Sports & Leisure International of Minneapolis recommends the city should open a major convention hotel by 2011. Such a hotel, the report suggested, could vault Kansas City to a position where it could attract the bigger conventions it’s now losing to places such as Denver, Dallas, San Antonio and Indianapolis.

“I think the music that’s being played now is very similar to the music played 15 years ago,” Kerr said.

Kerr is still mystified why city officials suddenly dropped support for the project.

“If that hotel would have been built, the convention activity in Kansas City would have been very different and the Future Farmers of America would not have left.”

Now, with a couple of billion dollars in redevelopment occurring close to the convention center including the Power & Light District and Sprint Center, Kerr believes the city should accept the recommendation for the 1,000-room hotel. On the other hand, he said, the city should ignore the report’s advice and help the Cordish Co. land a 200-room W Hotel downtown.

“We have so much of a better story to tell now than then,” he said. “If we built a 1,000-room hotel and a boutique hotel it would be the best thing that could happen to downtown.”

Kerr also concurred with the report’s description of the current stock of major hotels as being “tired.”

“Kansas City is so much stronger now with what we have going and yet we have the same tired, old hotels with the exception of the President and the new addition to the Marriott,” he said.

If Kansas City does start getting serious about building a 1,000-room hotel, City Manager Wayne Cauthen and Finance Director Debra Hinsvark will likely look at their old stomping grounds in Denver as an example.

Both had experience in the early stages of planning for that city’s new Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center.

The 1,100-room hotel opened in December 2005 and was built by the Denver Convention Center Hotel Authority, a creation of the city of Denver. The authority issued $367.5 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds to pay for the project. The construction cost was $285.5 million, and the remainder was set aside for a reserve and soft costs.

Denver officials say the 37-story hotel has performed beyond expectations and was instrumental in the city landing the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The authority has a contract with Hyatt to manage the facility.

“I think this Hyatt is one of the most successful branches, and the financing piece has worked well for the city,” said Denver City Council member Elbra Wedgeworth, who sits on the seven-member Hotel Authority board.

“It’s been a smashing success so far,” said John Desmond, a vice president at the Downtown Denver Partnership. “It’s been a real benefit to the city and really enhanced our ability to get conventions.”

Source: www.kansascity.com

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