It may be too soon to make a reservation at the proposed Denton hotel and convention center, as local leaders continue to weigh the feasibility of such a project.

While University of North Texas and city officials have taken a look at a similar convention center project in San Marcos, nothing has been finalized on the local project.

If plans move forward, the proposed hotel and conference center could open on the 10-acre former Radisson site off Interstate 35E near UNT. The facility would resemble the San Marcos site, which is near Texas State University, said Sheri Smith, spokeswoman for John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts, which would also run the proposed Denton hotel.

About 10 UNT and city officials toured the San Marcos facility this month to get an idea what the end product would look like, Smith said.

The facility — with 10 stories, 283 rooms and more than 75,000 square feet of meeting space — looked nice, but decisions on moving forward with hotel plans have not been made, said Linda Ratliff, economic development director for the city of Denton.

Ratliff toured the San Marcos facility June 8 with a local group that included City Manager George Campbell, Mayor Mark Burroughs and three other City Council members, along with UNT representative Pat Howell.

“It was really very interesting, and I’d love to see it in Denton,” Ratliff said. “We really don’t know yet, and there is no commitment. We’re not at that point yet.”

The potential impact of a conference center on Denton could be significant, said San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz, who met with Denton officials during their visit this month.

“If we didn’t have this hotel, there would be less hotel occupancy tax. … It’s keeping our market stable, and we are able to draw in meetings we wouldn’t otherwise get,” Narvaiz said.

The city of San Marcos entered a public-private partnership several years ago with John Q. Hammons, splitting the costs between the hotel and conference center, she said.

The city was responsible for a capped $20 million to construct the conference center on a 10-acre site donated by the landowner, Narvaiz said.

John Q. Hammons invested an estimated $50 million to $60 million on construction of the hotel and purchasing land, she said.

The developer spent a few more million dollars on top of the capped city dollars to make it look nice, she said.

The hotel occupancy taxes collected from the conference center are saving the local economy in San Marcos, Narvaiz said.

The city of Denton, University of North Texas and John Q. Hammons are in the initial stages of negotiations and are considering if the project is financially sound, Ratliff said.

If the deal goes through, all three players will have some financial stake in the project, but officials say it’s too early to know what the exact roles would be.

There’s also no timeline for the decision, and the threat of a deal falling through lingers, she said.

The City Council and UNT Board of Regents would have to approve the agreement.

“What happens if the numbers don’t work for us?” Ratliff asked. “The San Marcos facility would be fabulous for the Denton community, but we just have to make sure it’s the right decision.”

Denton’s city manager hired a consultant, Vinson & Elkins LLP, to help with the city’s negotiations and manage the sale of bonds that might be needed to fund the project, according to a memo to council members earlier this year. Officials have not discussed publicly the possibility of a bond sale, and Campbell’s memo — obtained under the Texas Public Information Act — did not detail how much money would be involved and who would pay back the debt.

Campbell declined to comment on the project last week, saying it was still too early in the negotiations.

Whether Denton will be able to support the new hotel growth has yet to be seen, but adding hotel rooms to Denton’s inventory might be a good thing, especially considering the possibilities of a conference center, said Lisa Swain, an associate in the Richardson office of PKF Consulting, an independent hotel and hospitality consulting group that studies the region’s hotel industry.

“If a convention center were to open, it would induce demand and bring groups that would’ve never considered Denton before [to the city],” Swain said.

The hope is for UNT to break ground on the conference center at the same time the university breaks ground on a new football stadium in January, said UNT President Gretchen Bataille.

But right now, the university has no time frame for starting the estimated 18-month project, Bataille said.

There likely won’t be a hotel in the next few months, but the university is continuing on the methodical process of working toward getting an agreement in place, said Milton “Pat” Howell, special assistant to Bataille and engineer on the project.

“It will be an extremely high-quality hotel for both UNT and the city,” Howell said. “We are still working with Mr. Hammons’ group on a development and defining a project. It is a slower process than I would like to have, but it’s within his time frame. It’s a process that’s moving forward.”

For John Q. Hammons, building a hotel near a university makes good business sense, said Smith, the company spokeswoman.

“We have a tendency to open near universities,” she said. “No matter what the economy, you always have people going to school.”

A definitive letter of intent on the hotel and conference center is in the works, but no deadlines will be set until the letter is signed, Smith said.

“John Q. Hammons knows where the growth will be and the areas that will succeed,” Smith said. “This is the time for Denton.”

Staff writer Lowell Brown contributed to this report.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.