Evin Eltife

A bill is currently in the drafting phase in the Texas Senate that could help the city of Tyler construct a hotel conference center.

A conference center has been a dream for Tyler officials for decades, but the project has recently gained momentum.

“It’s really acknowledging that tourism is a very viable and important economic development tool for the city of Tyler, bringing in fresh dollars to the community,” said Assistant City Manager Susan Guthrie. “It’s a strategy we have been working very hard for on for several years.”

The center with adjacent hotel could be built through a private-public partnership, with a total price tag of $56 million, according to the city. Tyler’s portion will not exceed $17 million, and will be paid back through hotel/motel tax revenues.

In December, the city council signed off on two agreements — one with Champ Hospitality to look for private equity to develop the hotel portion of the project and another with GT Development LLC to represent the city during negotiations.

While looking into the feasibility of utilizing a public-private partnership to build a hotel and conference center in Tyler, the city came across a set of tax laws that allows cities to receive rebates on the state portion of hotel occupancy taxes.

Ms. Guthrie said the trouble was that the series of laws were written for municipalities with populations more than 140,000. Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston have utilized the exemption, according to the city.

The city is losing an estimated 20,000 hotel room nightly rentals each year due to a lack of facilities, said Shari Rickman, vice president and general manager of the Tyler Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“We do keep a ‘lost opportunities’ list of people who contact us and say, ‘We would love to come to Tyler; what are your facilities like,’ and we give them our specs and they say, ‘you don’t have enough meeting space for us, or we need more breakout rooms.”

Ms. Rickman said the city is losing an estimated 20,000 to 22,000 visitors visiting restaurants and shops. The number could be higher if an annually reoccurring convention decides to make Tyler home.

“We are in competition with those communities that are greater than 140,000, so we feel we should have the same tools in our toolbox to attract these conventions,” Ms. Guthrie said.

Last week, the city council passed a resolution offering support to state legislators to amend the tax code to include Tyler. Representatives from the city also attend the East Texas Coalition Days in Austin last week to speak with the East Texas delegation on their concerns.

Texas Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler said his staff is drafting a bill that, if passed, would allow the city to receive hotel occupancy tax rebates for the next 10 years.

“This bill will be Tyler-specific,” Eltife said. “I heard there are some other cities that are wanting to do the same thing, so it might be one where anyone who is interested in doing this, we pull together (into) a piece of legislation.”

In 2011, Eltife and Rep. Chuck Hopson sponsored and carried bills to amend the Texas tax code to allow for an additional 2 percent hotel occupancy tax to be collected within Tyler city limits, and allocated for the new center. It’s generating about $600,000 annually.

Eltife said the city has been working toward opening the conference center since he was mayor in the late ‘90s.

“We have been tying for 20 or 30 years to get the tools in place to get a convention center, and if this will help the city get further down the road, it’s a good thing,” he said.

Rep. Matt Schaefer said his staff is looking at how a potential bill would affect other entities in the state. He said his office had requested meetings with the comptroller’s office on its feasibility.

Ms. Guthrie said if the Texas Legislature passes the measure, the funds would be used to pay for projects associated with the center, including infrastructure costs such as road construction, parking lots or costs associated with the pond on the property.

 

SPECS

The conference center could be located on 17.97 acres of city-owned property across from the Village at Cumberland Park retail development at Broadway Avenue and Toll 49.

A portion of the land, which includes a 3.7-acre lake, would be leased to a hotel developer.

The proposed center hotel is anticipated to generate new hotel occupancy tax income for the city, as well as sales tax revenue and property tax income, city officials said. The hotel could provide up to 250 rooms and the conference center could offer 26,000 square feet of meeting space. The actual scope would depend on the design that is yet to be completed, officials said.

“I think the most important thing to remember is that in our preliminary plans, (we want to) to undersize the hotel,” Ms. Guthrie said. “What we mean by that is the conference center will have a much higher occupancy than the hotel, which causes people in the conference center to spill over and go to hotels across the city. It’s a situation where all ships rise in terms of our hotel occupancy.”

The city would not sign for debt to build the hotel on the site but would be responsible for building the convention center next to it.

 

HARVEY HALL

Ms. Guthrie said the tax rebates could help Harvey Hall, but the future use of the facility has not been decided.

She said the rebates, legally, could not be used for Harvey Hall, but the funds could free up money in other places in the budget.

“It think there are a lot of things that feed to that (Harvey Hall),” she said. “It’s a community decision, and I think there is a great desire to keep Harvey open as a community center. This is one piece in a very complicate financial model that we are looking at.”

Twitter:@TMTFaith