Hundreds of acres of farmland and hay fields along Pleasant Grove Boulevard are making way for the highly anticipated John Q. Hammons' Embassy Suites Hotel and convention center, which will break ground on Aug. 24.

And future new developments include a high-tech research incubator, a 40-acre park similar to that of Central Park in New York, a 55-acre outdoor lifestyle center comparable to The Gateway, and a 350,000-square-foot business park north of a BMW dealership at the Pleasant Grove Interchange.

The business park, which is owned by Dennis Baker, a Boise, Idaho, land developer, will house a University of Phoenix campus, Horrocks Engineers, Central Bank and a hedge fund group.

These new developments, along with plans to revitalize the downtown area, are part of an ambitious city plan to "lift Pleasant Grove out of the 1850s into the 21st century," Mayor Michael Daniels said at a business alliance meeting Friday.

But the city's economic development strategy has to be managed in light of the growth in neighboring cities including American Fork and Lindon, Daniels said.

"To the north in American Fork, Woodbury Corp. did a really good job laying out big-box retail with Meadows Mall. To the south in Lindon, there are high-end car dealerships and to the west, there are large scale manufacturing facilities like Tahitian Noni and Xango," he said.

How will we differentiate Pleasant Grove from those areasfi Daniels asked.

He sees the multi-million dollar hotel and 120,000-square-foot convention center project in Pleasant Grove as a possible magnet for trade shows and conventions for many companies including multi-level marketing firms in Utah Valley.

"They don't go to Provo, Thanksgiving Point or Pleasant Grove. Right now, they're going to Salt Lake City. Tech companies like Novell are also taking their business to Salt Lake City or hosting it at the University of Utah," Daniels said.

But there has to be enough hotel room inventory in Pleasant Grove and Utah County to attract conventioneers, or they won't come, he said.

"In Little Rock, Ark., Hammons initially built a 180-room Embassy Suites hotel and convention center. But he couldn't book conventions in that hotel because it was too small. He had to ask other hotels in the surrounding area to help out, and that helped to grow the hotel business in that area," Daniels said. "Today, that area has more than 400 hotel rooms to support conventioneers."

Daniels believes there is sufficient demand to support both the Pleasant Grove convention center and a similar center in downtown Provo.

"It's more a coopetition, a term coined by Ray Noorda to mean a blend of cooperation and competition. The Pleasant Grove convention center will be good for Thanksgiving Point, Pleasant Grove and Provo," he said.

He believes the combined future convention and meeting space at Pleasant Grove, Thanksgiving Point and Provo will help Utah County compete with Salt Lake City for larger business events.

To attract convention business, in addition to hotel rooms Pleasant Grove must have enough shopping, dining and nightlife amenities, he said. To that end, the convention center could play host to several Sundance Film Festival events and films, and the Embassy Suites could be home to large restaurant chains such as The Cheesecake Factory and Ruth's Chris Steak House.

The Pleasant Grove convention center could be host to international trade associations and major corporate conventions, as opposed to the government groups, social and education groups targeted by the planned Provo convention center, said Richard Bradford, Pleasant Grove's economic development director.

Baker, who owns 230 acres of raw ground in Pleasant Grove and Lindon, is co-developing the lifestyle center after the original developer Westwood Development Group dropped its plans to build the so-called Sundance Commons. He is now in talks with three national developers.

To enhance the Embassy Suites's draw, Hammons has made modifications to the 13-story, 300-room hotel that will offer panoramic views of the mountains to the east, and Utah Lake to the west.

"In the original hotel design, the living room has a view of the atrium, and the bedroom has a view of the lake or the mountain. With the unique curvature of the hotel tower at a 12.5 degree arc, Hammons turned both rooms sideways so they now have a view of the atrium and the lake or the mountain," Daniels said.

"When completed, this hotel could rival in beauty and size the Grand America in Salt Lake," he said.

That hotel redesign in part delayed the project's groundbreaking by nearly six months, he said. The project is now expected to be completed in February 2009. In addition, a 220-room Courtyard Marriott with up to 40,000 square feet of onsite meeting space is also in the works.

But the city's grand plan faces some challenges.

"Downtown revitalization is a struggle because it has devolved, not evolved, over so many years that few investors are now willing to go in to resurrect the area," Daniels said. "Besides, there is historical value in downtown buildings. So there are rules about what can or can't be done there."

But there are investor groups looking to help with the revitalization, he said.

"We could rebuild what's historical with modern technology," he said. "There are also attempts to masterplan the downtown area along the lines of a Midtown Village in Orem. What we want is a revitalized downtown where conventioneers could go to buy their gourmet chocolate, or have an ice-cream and watch a stagecoach go by."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.

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