Officials striving to tie up cruise line.

Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - If Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. decides to build a large reservations call center in the Gateway area, it will be quite a coup for local officials who have spent months working steadily behind the scenes.

E-mails obtained by The Register-Guard under the state public records law show that the city staff has been hustling with increasing intensity to provide information to Royal Caribbean about planning, development, transportation and other issues.

City officials even came up with a code name for the project: "Project Gopher," after the yeoman purser character on "The Love Boat," a 1970s television series.

Springfield has some experience in the project-naming department, having dubbed the highly secretive Sony compact disc factory project in 1994 as "The Big Fish."

Springfield officials expect the Miami-based cruise line to file an application any day now for a 150,000-square-foot to 200,000-square-foot call center on 22 acres in the Gateway area. A development meeting between city officials and representatives of the cruise line is set for Sept. 2.

Company officials won't comment, except to say they haven't made any final decisions. But the city's records show that local officials are busy nailing down a wide range of details.

Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership, a nonprofit business recruitment agency, said Royal Caribbean aims to have the facility up and running by fall 2005.

The e-mail trail leading to the upcoming development conference with the city staff began with a short note from Springfield City Manager Mike Kelly referring to a dinner meeting March 31 with officials from an unnamed company. A few days later, Kelly reported on the meeting, saying Eugene-Springfield was one of four areas being considered by the company.

The project came into clearer focus by late April, when correspondence began to heat up among the city staff and Roberts.

Much of it relates to building and permit requirements, city fees such as systems development charges, and expected approval time for two Gateway sites: a 22-acre vacant parcel along Sports Way and the shuttered Sony CD plant.

Royal Caribbean didn't pursue the Sony site, and PeaceHealth announced Tuesday that it plans to buy the empty factory.

Royal Caribbean wants to know `how long it will take us to get to `yes,' ' Bill Grile, Springfield's development services director, e-mailed to other city staff members. `Jack (Roberts) indicated the prospect has stressed the importance of `no surprises.' '

City records show that Royal Caribbean originally considered building a 230,000-square-foot facility on about 30 acres to house up to 1,400 employees. But the company scaled back those plans when construction cost estimates came back too high, Roberts said. Under the 30-acre plan, Royal Caribbean would have acquired land from three separate owners: the local Chambers, Guistina and Rice families. Under the 22-acre project, only land from Chambers would be used.

Also in late April, the city was working on amendments to its campus industrial zone, which covers the Gateway area.

That process had begun months earlier, but the timing allowed the city to write its changes to ensure that a use such as Royal Caribbean's call center would be allowed in the zone.

The updated code now lists "call centers that process predominantly inbound telephone calls," as an outright permitted use in campus industrial zones. The Royal Caribbean facility would mainly handle calls from travel agents booking cruises.

City records show that staff members provided information not only to Royal Caribbean, but to national builder/developers who were bidding to construct the large project.

Roberts said Royal Caribbean will be using Workstage as developer.

Workstage, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., recently built a 115,200-square-foot call center in Omaha, Neb. for PayPal, the online payment company owned by eBay. Workstage completed that project 5 1/2 months after groundbreaking, according to its Web site.

Workstage will use the Nebraska facility as a model for Royal Caribbean's project, Roberts said.