Bismarck Mayor John Warford - a supporter of creating an arts and science and recreation center in the vacant Palace Arms Hotel - has called for a 3 p.m. Thursday meeting at city hall with the city administrator, a city commissioner and the parks district director to discuss what role the city might be able to take on to help make it a reality.

In the past, there have been projects like the Civic Center and the community bowl, and Warford said he thinks this project is the next step in enhancing the city's reputation for a high quality of life.

"Think of what it would do for children in the community, for passive economic development. Look what it would do for recreation. Look what it would do for the elderly, for the health of citizens," he said.

"Bottom line is that it's going to make Bismarck a better community."

He said there are no negatives, except how to pay for it. "It always comes down to money."

Warford said calling the meeting was his way of trying to help the project move ahead. He realizes there is a deadline.

The Bismarck Parks and Recreation District's board is scheduled to make a decision April 15 on whether to buy the Palace Arms building and wants to have a solid plan presented on how the project would be funded.

A committee of local arts and science groups, businesspeople and Steve Neu, director of the Bismarck Parks and Recreation District, are scrambling to get several private and public funding sources on board to help pay for an about 125,000-square-foot facility that would use about 80,000 square feet of the salvageable portion of the hotel. The rest would be new construction. The idea is to create one-stop-shopping for arts, science and recreation experiences. Groups such as Dakota Stage Ltd. community theater, Northern Plains Ballet and the Gateway to Science Center and dozens of other groups would make their home there as well as a city recreation center that would have such things as a gymnasium, running track and multi-purpose room.

The project originally was estimated to cost $12 million, but that was before it was determined that part of the hotel could be salvaged, lowering the cost. That new price tag is still being worked on.

Warford said the original cost gave him sticker shock, but now it's his understanding that "some economies have been brought into the project."

Warford said the city doesn't have money with other obligations looming like the $3 million the city is responsible for on the new Memorial Bridge, construction starting in 2006.

However, he said the city could help Neu and other project supporters get the word out about all of the benefits of creating this facility as well as to try to help secure some federal funding or other funds - and he'd like to provide philosophical support.

"We want to have the community and specifically the city leadership behind this project," he said.

Neu said Tuesday that he's hoping to hear in Thursday's meeting that there's a chance the project could be included in the next package of sales tax-funded projects presented to voters at a future election.

Warford said the next election to determine uses for revenues from the city's 1-cent sales tax probably will be in 2005. He said it would have to be a citizens' grass-roots effort to get this project into that package. And he doesn't know if there would be room for it with the city's Memorial Bridge and street improvement projects.

"That's a possiblity, but I'm not going to decide that. The people are going to decide that," he said.

Currently, the sales tax generates about $8 million a year.

Neu said there will be other meetings with potential partners in the next week or so.

"Realistically, the help is going to come from many sources," he said.

But he is confident the pieces are there. It's just putting the puzzle together.

There will be a 7 p.m. April 13 community meeting to explain, among other things, how the financial picture is shaping up. The meeting location hasn't been finalized.

By the time of the meeting, "We'll have all that in place … We'll have a business plan in place," said Beth Demke, director of the Gateway to Science Center.

She said she thinks this project has staying power.

"I think if it (were going to die), it would have died by now," she said.

She said she thinks there's community support for this "real community asset."

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com.)