Dec. 31--HOT SPRINGS, Ark.--Hot Springs has surged into the lead in the state's convention-center race. 

Spa City promoters broke ground earlier this month on a 120,000-square-foot expansion that will make the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center the largest in Arkansas. The $27 million project will add a 6,000-seat arena, continuing an aggressive expansion, augmenting the center fivefold since 1998. 

At a time when several Arkansas cities are opening new convention space, the Hot Springs expansion ratchets up the competition, adding not only the sports and entertainment arena but an adjoining nine-story hotel planned by Missouri hotelier John Q. Hammons. 

The expanded center and the $35 million hotel are expected to open in late 2003. 

Little Rock, home of the Statehouse Convention Center, the state's biggest for now, is likely to most acutely feel the effects of the Hot Springs developments, Hammons said. 

"I think it's very competitive to downtown Little Rock," said Hammons, chairman and chief executive of the Hammons hotel chain. Based in Springfield, Mo., the company has built 147 hotels in 40 states and still owns 82, including the Embassy Suites in west Little Rock. 

The new Hot Springs hotel, connected to the convention center by an enclosed walkway, will also be an Embassy Suites, with 250 "upscale" rooms, Hammons said. 

He said he has considered building in Hot Springs for several years. 

"When they added that convention center to it, I said, "Hello, I'm getting the message," Hammons said. 

Already adjacent to the convention center is the 14-story The Austin Hotel and Spa. It was built in 1986 as a Hilton Hotel and later changed hands. 

The expanded convention center will enclose 360,000 square feet of heated space, said Gordon Mahoney, deputy director of the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission, which operates the convention center. 

The new arena, financed with a bond issue backed by a sales tax, will allow the Hot Springs center to schedule sports events and entertainers as well as accommodate two large conventions at once, Mahoney said. 

"I think it can accommodate either larger conventions or multiple conventions," he said. 

Mahoney conceded that the Little Rock area's bigger venues, principally Alltel Arena, will still draw the headliners. 

Though it is not connected to the convention center, Alltel Arena -- just across the Arkansas River in North Little Rock -- can seat about 18,000, making that drawing power much bigger than the Statehouse Convention Center. 

The arena has drawn the likes of singers Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen. 

"The bigger acts, I think, are still going to go up the road to Little Rock," Mahoney said. 

But the expanded Hot Springs Convention Center will provide a niche for the entertainment circuit's lesser lights. 

Even as Arkansas tourism officials welcome a big new venue that stands to bring more outside business into the state, no one doubts it will compete with existing centers for trade shows and conventions. 

"Of course, it's competition; there's no way around that," said Barry Travis, executive director of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau. Once Little Rock loses the right to market itself as the home of the state's largest convention center, the Statehouse Convention Center will have to work harder to sell itself, Travis said. 

Separated by only about 50 miles, the two centers already compete head-to-head, primarily for regional and state business. The Statehouse Convention Center has benefited from a 1999 expansion that added 40,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, at a cost of $23 million. 

Fort Smith also added 40,000 square feet of exhibit space, staging a grand opening for its expanded convention center this fall. 

The $40 million project included not only the new space but also a complete renovation of the old space, transforming the downtown center from a traditional 1960s-vintage civic center to a full-fledged convention center, said Deputy City Administrator Dean Kruithof. 

The center now encompasses more than 120,000 square feet. It is one of a handful of convention centers in the state that surpass 100,000 square feet, although size comparisons can be problematic because centers classify their space differently. 

The linchpin in a downtown redevelopment push, the Fort Smith Convention Center already has attracted Anne Murray, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association. Kruithof said the city is positioning the center primarily for state and regional business. 

"Every now and then we look for national-type conventions," he said. 

The Hot Springs center stands to lure some business away from Fort Smith. 

But the Spa City development is "not something we feel bad about at all," Kruithof said. 

"Hot Springs is a different community than Fort Smith," he said. "Their economy has a higher degree of tourism and conventions than we do. 

"Our attitude is, yes, we are going to compete at times. But if we have a number of facilities in the state that are bringing dollars in from outside the state, that is good for everybody." 

In Pine Bluff, with its 165,000-square-foot Pine Bluff Convention Center, executive director Bob Purvis took a similar view of the expansion in Hot Springs. 

"It seems to make the pie bigger rather than the slice slimmer," he said. 

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(c) 2001, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.