Clinton Library doesn't tempt Hammons.

THE UNITED STATES must look like one large hotel to John Q. Hammons, with northwest Arkansas as its ballroom.

The legendary Springfield, Mo., hotelier has built 150 hotels from coast to coast, Bakersfield to Beaumont, Sioux Falls to Springdale.

"The activity in northwest Arkansas is very, very upbeat and far exceeds anything else anywhere," Hammons said. "It's certainly as robust as any place and far superior than most places."

One of Hammons' latest projects is the $47 million, 10-story, 250-room Embassy Suites at Rogers' Pinnacle Hills. It will be the largest hotel in Washington or Benton counties. And Hammons recently announced plans to build a 220-250 room Courtyard by Marriott adjacent to the Embassy Suites.

The publicly traded John Q. Hammons Hotels Inc. already owns the Holiday Inn Northwest Arkansas and the Hampton Inn & Suites, both in Springdale. He is building a $35 million, nine-story, 252-room Embassy Suites that will open in Hot Springs in October, and he is looking for potential sites for a hotel in Conway. He already has the 251-room Embassy Suites in west Little Rock, a full-service convention center with 14,000 SF of meeting space, including an 11,000-SF ballroom.

But Hammons said he was "not interested" in moving into the downtown Little Rock area.

"[Little Rock] is oversupplied now," Hammons said. "People are anticipating all kinds of growth with the Clinton Library, and that's all well and good. They tried to persuade me to put one up near the Texas A&M campus when the George Bush Library was going up. But I've seen these libraries around the country. People can't wait to go to them. But two weeks after it opens, it's dead."

Hammons' company, which reported $328.5 million in revenues for the first three quarters of 2002, builds, owns and manages hotels. The subject of the recent biography "They Call Him John Q.: A Hotel Legend," the 83-year-old Hammons said he likes to have an average of four new hotels opening with another four under construction each year.

The company's complete 2002 numbers won't be out until late December But for 2001, Hammons Hotels had $436.7 million in revenue and a net loss of $3.1 million (59 cents per share).

Hammons' focus lately appears to be in Arkansas. The Embassy Suites in Rogers is expected to be open for business by mid-May. It will include 30,000 SF of meeting space, including an 11,000-SF main ballroom, a 5,000-SF junior ballroom, two executive boardrooms and 12 smaller conference rooms. His Holiday Inn in Springdale has been northwest Arkansas' only large convention center with 48,000 SF of meeting space. The Bentonville Clarion Hotel has 26,000 SF and 105 rooms.

Hammons is not worried about his two convention centers located about 15 miles apart hurting each other.

"It won't because I own both," he said. "I'm only taking care of the market condition."

First Come, First Serve

Forward, thinking and market analysis, Hammons said, indicate northwest Arkansas is the place to be.

"If you get to the strawberry patch on the first two days you're probably gonna pick some really nice ones," he said. "That's what I do. If you go on the 26th day, your pickings are gonna be slow."

With the area being home to the world's largest company, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville; a Fortune 100 company in Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale; and one of the world's largest trucking companies in Lowell's J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., Hammons said investing in northwest Arkansas is a can't-miss opportunity.

"No. 1, you have Wal-Mart and the vendor population there," Hammons said. "The new airport is tremendous. And the interstate that will eventually go from New Orleans to Kansas City will be a great deal. From the north to the south you're going to have a big feeder to the trunk of the tree. There are so many opportunities with the new freeway.

"No. 2 is the strength of the players in northwest Arkansas. There are heavy-duty companies there along with the University of Arkansas. Also, there is great [population] growth in the area ... That's why I've made the investments I have there.

"In seven or eight years you won't believe how much growth you're going to have in the Pinnacle Hills area on both sides of the freeway. I know what's going to happen there. I've done business in 40 states, so I know what makes things fail and I know what makes things win. And the people there are taking very aggressive steps."

Rogers Mayor Steve Womack said having "the best of the best" like Hammons believe in Rogers' future has spoiled the city.

"I guess one of best compliments ever paid to the city is to have a guy with [Hammons'] background and his expertise speak well of the people of Rogers," Womack said. "He has so much demand placed on him to do these kind of projects in other areas. He is a businessman, and he understands the risk/ reward type situation. He didn't get where he is today making a whole lot mistakes. He knows what he's doing.

"Rogers is going to continue to grow and demand the type of infrastructure he's accustomed to building. And Bentonville, Rogers, Lowell, and Springdale and Fayetteville are going to benefit from the ripple effect. Anything like what he's doing is going to positively affect the economy in this area. Those are the kind of buildings you don't commonly see in northwest Arkansas;"

Vendor Sleepovers

With a large portion of the hotel business in northwest Arkansas coming from the Wal-Mart vendors, Hammons said it makes for a unique situation. The hotels are actually stronger during the work week with a lighter occupancy on weekends.

Hammons' unwritten rule is to build near state capitals, universities and preferably where there are both such as in Madison, Wis.; Columbia, S.C.; Lincoln, Neb.; and Sacramento, Calif.

"In real estate, people always say 'location, location, location,"' Hammons said. "In the hotel business you better identify market, market, market. I think the growth structure in northwest Arkansas will continue because of the strength and the type of industry there. There's not steel mills. There's not cotton gins. You have to evaluate the scope of the industries that are there. And we're also building a hotel quality that doesn't exist there."

Hammons believes northwest Arkansas' growth will continue north to the Missouri line, but he said he doesn't expect much additional business south of Fayetteville.

"When the [Northwest Arkansas Regional] airport was created, that was a hard blow to the Fayetteville area," Hammons said.

Despite being the largest city in northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville does not have a Hammons project and likely won't anytime soon.

In the late 1980s, Hammons had some interest in the Fayetteville market. The late Sam Walton, founder of WalMart, had persuaded Hammons to look into the area as a possible location for one of his hotels.

But he saw a trend begin to develop that scared him away from Fayetteville.

"The minute I saw three budget hotels being built in Fayetteville I knew my insurance policy for survival was to put the Holiday Inn and Convention Center in Springdale," he said. "You cannot win against budget hotels. Discounting is a dangerous deal. [Fayetteville] is being overbuilt with budget-type properties. It's oversupplied, and with that you have a lesser scale of delivery and service.

"It's all about aging. A grandma can't win in Atlantic City in September. That's when the Miss America contest is going on. Neither can the older budget hotels. They should be demolished, but they just won't do it."

Hammons said it was at that point he knew there needed to be an upscale hotel and convention center in the area, and he soon found just the place in Springdale for his Holiday Inn. It has 206 rooms with 18,000 SF of meeting space. The adjoining convention center was not built until 1995, allowing another 30,000 SF of meeting space. He soon added the 102-room Hampton Inn & Suites next to the Holiday Inn.

Hammons originally built Holiday Inns--67 of them--before changing to Embassy Suites and Marriotts.

"They were more upscale," he said. "That's where I wanted to play. When you start out to build a nice hotel, you can't go halfway and quit or you're gonna lose. If you start out to build a four-star hotel, you better build a four-star hotel."

Hammons' company also builds and manages Sheraton, Radisson, Crowne Plaza, Residence and Renaissance hotels, among others. He has a Renaissance in Oklahoma City but is building what he calls a "spectacular" Embassy Suites in Tulsa. He also has a Holiday Inn in Joplin, Mo., three hotels in Springfield and another in Branson, Mo. (Chateau on the Lake). He has an Embassy Suites in Nashville, Tenn., and five hotels in Texas, but he has no hotels in Mississippi or Louisiana.

Hammons' new upscale hotels have atriums for security purposes and convention centers to "pull people together."

The tourism industry suffered following the events of September 11. But Hammons said northwest Arkansas was one of the few areas where the drop-off was not very significant.

"After 9-11, the big hotel and resorts got the heck knocked out of them," Hammons said. "Especially the ones on the islands and around the big airports. But we're in solid business communities. And I don't think we noticed much difference at all down in northwest Arkansas."