
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992                   TAG: 9203080156
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAX LEGISLATION MAKES HOTEL `A PILOT PROJECT'

The legislation that would allow Roanoke and Virginia Tech to use state sales-tax receipts to resurrect the Hotel Roanoke is a "novel concept" never before tried in Virginia, its sponsor said Friday.

"Never, to my mind, have sales tax revenues been diverted to a single project," said Del. Clifton Woodrum, D-Roanoke. "We made it, in essence, a pilot project."

Last week, the House approved Woodrum's "Public Facilities Act" after the Senate winnowed the proposal to apply only to Roanoke's hotel project. "They didn't want to do it for the whole state until they get a handle on what this will cost," he said.

Woodrum credited former Sen. Granger Macfarlane, a hotel executive, for promoting the concept. And the former Roanoke lawmaker, in turn, credited city officials and a state legislative services worker for drafting the original bill, patterned after a similar plan in Alabama.

Other Virginia cities have shown interest in the plan, which allows localities to funnel state sales-tax receipts toward paying off debt on a publicly owned facility.

Woodrum's original bill would have allowed all state localities to apply the financing plan to publicly owned hotels, convention and conference centers, auditoriums, coliseums, product markets, exhibition halls, sports arenas and horse- and auto-racing tracks.

But the final bill now awaiting Gov. Douglas Wilder's signature would allow sales-tax diversion only to benefit "any hotel owned by a foundation whose sole purpose is to benefit a state-supported university" and attached to a public facility.

Tech's private real estate foundation officially owns the closed hotel. A conference center to be built across the street from the hotel would be jointly owned by the university and the city, making it a public facility.

Woodrum's bill likely will prove a boon to the project, which has floundered amid a devastating real-estate recession. But the Roanoke Democrat saw to it that a deadline was included in the legislation as a "little impetus" for the hotel planners.

Planners have until Jan. 1, 1994, to take advantage of the act. "But if they need more time, we should be able to arrange it," Woodrum said. "There's no reason for them to dawdle around. I put that in there for a reason: I want them to move."

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