The Danville, CA-based developer last spring won the right to develop the project by telling the FWDA Board of Directors that it would build for $70 million a 124-room hotel on one of the two parcels, a 200-unit condominium tower on the other, both with ground floor retail space. Last fall, however, the original hotel operator Nearon was working with bowed out, saying the hotel did not pencil out given the cost of new hotel construction and the average daily rate for hotel rooms in Tacoma.

Then late last year Nearon began working Robert Thurston, owner of Seattle's Inn at the Market, on an idea for the smaller boutique hotel. In February, Nearon project manager Mark Ossola told GlobeSt.com that the smaller hotel might work if were topped off with 16 to 20 luxury condominiums, as their sale would offset the hotel's development cost, allowing it to be profitable with a lower the average daily rate. The revised plan, which is $10-million more expensive, calls for the project to break ground late this year and be complete in early 2006.

Nearon was scheduled to give the FWDA a final decision this week on whether the revised plan was feasible. Instead, at Nearon's request, the FWDA gave the firm until mid-May to complete detailed architectural plans, cost estimates and market studies. Meantime, the likelihood of a 2004 groundbreaking is rapidly deteriorating. Originally, the plan was to have the project completed in 2005.