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TAMPA - A new conference center at Tampa's port would raise the area's high-tech profile and attract the kind of people to make the city a cooler, more economically dynamic place.
Or the project might destroy irreplaceable waterfront facilities and endanger blue-collar businesses that are the port's heart and soul.
Interests on each side of a controversy over the proposed $400-million Tampa Global Communication Teleconvergence Center made their points at a public hearing Monday. Port commissioners could vote on a agreement with the developers as soon as Oct. 19.
Resort owner Murray Klauber leads a group that wants to build the high-tech center and a 45-story hotel and condominium tower on public land just north of Tampa Port Authority headquarters on Channelside Drive.
The deal was been in the works for four years. The group, Tampa International Technology Center, now has a five-star hotel operator and a lender on board, Klauber says. Developers want a new agreement that would give them until March to produce a financing commitment and a year after that to start construction.
But the deal would doom Metroport, a slip leased to International Ship Repair & Marine Services, the port's second-largest shipyard. The port authority would fill in the deep-water slip for a commercial tower that the group wants to build after its conference center.
Klauber and his representatives didn't speak at the hearing. Supporters said a high-tech conference center built for beaming corporate conferences and training sessions around the globe would be a huge asset to the Tampa Bay area.
The center would include three amphitheaters, an exhibition hall and meeting rooms - all linked to satellite, fiber-optic cable and wireless systems.
"The facility ... will put us on the map," said Michael Kovac, director of a high-tech research center at the University of South Florida. "Every week, I'm watching conferences on the Web. You can't be part of the competitive atmosphere without a facility like this."
Techies who visit to train in Tampa could end up relocating and building the local talent pool, said Peter Kageyama, a director of Creative Tampa Bay, a nonprofit group devoted to attracting young professionals to the area.
"It's another way to bring them here in a professional context and show them everything Tampa has to offer," he said.
However, representatives of traditional maritime businesses said they were worried about the jobs of workers at the port.
The port authority needs to study the consequences of closing the ship repair facility before approving the deal, said attorney Tim Shusta, who represents the Port of Tampa Maritime Industries Association.
"There are material impacts," he said. "What are the economic impacts? What's the effect on employment?"
Tad Humphreys, president of International Ship, said there's no way the port authority can replace deep water berth space so close to Tampa if Metroport is filled in.
He had a memo in which the agency's real estate director, Peter Ferri, reassures legal counsel Dale Bohner that even if Klauber walked out of the deal, the port authority would come out ahead financially by filling the slip and having 2.8 acres of new real estate.
"If you extend that logic," Humphreys said, "why not just fill the entire port?"