Cruise line call center navigates obstacles.

Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 9/21/04): An August 2004 e-mail that was quoted at length toward the end of the article on Page A1 in the Sept. 17 Register-Guard about the efforts by Royal Caribbean to establish a call center in Springfield was written by Mel Oberst, Springfield's planning supervisor, and was addressed to Bill Grile, city development services director. The article stated an incorrect author for a portion of the quoted e-mail.

SPRINGFIELD - Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. wants to have hundreds of agents booking cruises at a new call center off Interstate 5 in Gateway by January 2006.

But for that to happen, the Miami-based cruise line must quickly tie up many loose strings.

And if the company fails to do that within the next six weeks and break ground on the building by Nov. 1, it will delay groundbreaking until next spring, with the center opening only later in 2006, the company says.

The company must:

Still reach a deal to buy the 22-acre development site from Eugene businesswoman Carolyn Chambers.

Resolve how to configure the site. The company has proposed putting its building atop what is now a public city street. Royal Caribbean must decide whether to ask the city to give up that stretch of road, move the road or place its building somewhere else on the site.

Submit building designs that conform to visual standards for Gateway's campus-industrial area - a topic that at least one city official has fretted over.

Russ Bogue, Royal Caribbean's director of facilities management, told city officials at a taped Sept. 2 meeting that the company must break ground by Nov. 1 in order to meet an ambitious construction, hiring and training timetable. Royal Caribbean wants to hire 230 employees in fall 2005 and train new agents to start working the phones in January 2006 for the company's busiest time of the year, according to materials obtained by The Register-Guard in a public records request.

Royal Caribbean calls the first couple of months of each year its "wave period," Bogue said. "We actually do 50 percent of our business for the whole year in that 10-week period," he said.

Under that timetable, the company would add 340 employees later in 2006, and climb to a total of up to 1,000 in 2008, Bogue said.

If the company can't start construction by Nov. 1, he said, it will postpone hiring and won't open the center until spring 2006.

Royal Caribbean officials haven't issued public statements on their plans for the 180,000-square-foot center. However, the city's records show Royal Caribbean is serious. Company officials did not return calls Thursday from The Register-Guard.

Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken said the cruise line's representatives have been busy with the hurricanes in the Southeast.

It's looking less and less likely the company will meet its Nov. 1 deadline.

"Breaking ground by Nov. 1 is probably optimistic," said Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership, the nonprofit agency that helped Royal Caribbean find a local site.

But he said construction could probably be completed in less time than Royal Caribbean thinks. "If permits are ready to go, the company could break ground as late as April or May 1 and still be up and operating by January 2006," he said.

But Royal Caribbean and Chambers still must agree on a price for the vacant 22 acres that Chambers bought from the city for $5.4 million in September 2002.

Leiken said the sides may be getting close. He said he doesn't know how much Chambers is asking.

The city can't process applications until Royal Caribbean controls the property or the existing owner lets the applications move forward, said John Tamulonis, Springfield economic development manager.

Meanwhile, the 700-foot section of city-owned Sports Way that cuts south-to-north through the middle of the Chambers land is a problem.

Preliminary plans filed by the company show part of the call center building sitting on Sports Way. A 750-space parking lot would sit next to the building, covering up much of the rest of Sports Way.

To allow that, the city would have to agree to "vacate" Sports Way - eliminate it as a public street. That requires a recommendation from the city Planning Commission and a decision by the City Council, with public hearings at both stages, and potential for appeal.

The company's initial proposal doesn't appear to satisfy the legal requirements for a road vacation, the city public works staff said in a Sept. 2 memo. A vacation can't hurt access, traffic circulation and emergency service protection, the memo said.

The vacation proposal doesn't appear to provide access to wellheads or other facilities in the area that are owned by local utilities, the memo said. Also, vacating the street would create, to the north, a landlocked section of Maple Island Slough Road, a public road connecting to Sports Way, and it would eliminate public road access to city-owned land north of the site, the memo said.

Dan Brown, Springfield public works director, said the city and Royal Caribbean will hash it out. "In early stages like this, no one has any clear answers in how things ought to be," he said.

It was unclear Thursday whether the company will try to have the road vacated, or if it might instead build a new public road elsewhere on the site - a costly proposition - or shift the building's location.

Roberts said that from the first time company officials saw the property, they wanted the road vacated. "They don't want to have a public right of way dividing their property," he said.

Royal Caribbean's Bogue said at the development meeting that employees' needs are driving the building's design. "Our goal is to create a comfortable, safe and attractive facility," he said.

"We're going to make sure that as you're driving by ... that the building is very attractive and the landscaping is very nice, that it actually enhances the community," he said.

But one city official was dismayed by early drawings that showed a large, low-slung building.

"I doubt this flat-roof, big-box building design will be able to meet even the minimal building design standards of the campus industrial district," Mel Oberst, planning supervisor, wrote to Bill Grile, city development services director, in an e-mail in late August.

Building exteriors in the campus industrial district must have "a combination of architectural elements and features," including offsets, windows, entrances and roof treatments, according to city code.

The early drawings showed something "very similar to viewing a Wal-Mart or Costco," Grile wrote.

"I think we need to ask the question, will this building have any utility and premier resale value in seven years. I seriously doubt it," he said.

"Even though we are not the owners or investors in this project, I think we can learn from Sony that the city has a real `investment' in this building," he wrote. "I know we are trying to create jobs, but jobs come and go. What we should be really concerned about is creating property value and substantial and sustainable industrial buildings in our campus industrial (zone)."

Sony built a huge factory in the Gateway area in the mid-1990s, and closed it eight years later.

Royal Caribbean is still working on its design, Tamulonis said.