Mesa Verde National Park officials Monday unveiled a very tentative proposal for a 120,000-square-foot museum/visitor center that was repeatedly described as "grandiose" by the chairman of the local tourism board.

Although the plan, the topic of a week-long workshop at the Cortez Conference Center, is still far from gaining final approval, the whole concept left more than one local stakeholder —described by Montezuma County Commissioner Kelly Wilson as "the guy left holding the stick" — raising questions about possible negative impacts on the local economy and on visitation at other area tourist attractions.

P.G. West, head of the Umbrella Tourism Committee and owner of the Turquoise Motor Inn in Cortez, said while the idea of a visitor center near the entrance to the park has been kicked around for a long time, such a sweeping project could be a "two-edged sword."

"I didn’t realize it was going to be so grandiose," West said of the proposed complex, which would also house research facilities, administrative office space and a ticket outlet as well as an outdoor amphitheater.

The center may well attract more visitors, he conceded, but at the same time cause them to stay in the area for shorter periods and spend fewer dollars in the community.

""I think we would see a substantial decrease in the number of visitors going into the park," he said, because more would travel on to other places after getting what was referred to as the "IMAX experience" at the center.

"We tell people now that it takes all day (to visit the park)," he said, "but with this grandiose visitor center, we’d have to tell them the truth — they could see everything there except the sites."

West also raised the issues of whether a gondola-type mass-transit system, if one were ever developed, would originate from the visitor center or from Cortez, as the local business community would prefer; how much sales- and lodgers-tax revenue might be lost if a giant hotel complex were developed next to the center; and how the center would affect visits to other cultural attractions, such as the already "highly under-used" Anasazi Heritage Center.

Murray Gelberg, the architect who drew up the conceptual plans for the visitor center and has designed 30 others, strenuously disputed West’s assessment, asking if he were more of an optimist or pessimist.

"I am almost diametrically opposed to everything you said," Gelberg said, pointing out that the center would actually be promoting other local attractions and hostelries and could increase their business.

"I would think the length of stay (of the average tourist) would double or triple," he said.

The proposed center’s design is an interpretation of the Anasazi-style structures within the park, but doesn’t "copy" them, Gelberg explained, and would have two levels arranged in a semicircle with a kiva-like depression, or "tribal area," in the middle. All offices would have windows looking out at the environment, he noted, "since it’s designed to attract the best people in the system and keep them (at Mesa Verde)."

Larry Wiese, the park’s director, said a study done two years ago showed that Mesa Verde has a $500-million impact on the regional economy and a $125-million effect on the economy of the area immediately surrounding the park.

"This facility can increase that opportunity," Wiese maintained, pointing out that a visitor center near the park entrance had been identified as a need as far back as the 1920s.

"We’re not serving the visitor as we should, not providing (enough) information," he said.

Along with "capturing people and holding them longer," he explained, the center would provide a home for many of the park’s 2 million artifacts that are now stored in a metal shed and "deteriorating on the shelves." He said the 24 Native American tribes with connections to the Anasazi culture had had a great deal of input on the design of the center, which he said is reminiscent of the Long House cliff dwelling in the park.

The center would also improve communication among staff members and between the park and the surrounding community by consolidating various offices, Wiese said.

"We’ve been known as the ‘fiefdom on the hill,’" he said, "and to some degree that’s still true."

Wiese pointed out that Gelberg had already reduced the original proposal for a 300,000-square-foot center to less than half that since he was asked to "make some sense of this."

Cortez Mayor Joe Keck said he was "open-minded" at this point but also expressed concerns about the center’s effect on the town’s sales-tax base and what commercial development it might bring near the entrance that would compete with existing businesses.

Keck said that currently 17 percent of the local economy is related to tourism and that Cortez could ill afford to see this figure drop.

"I would want some substantiation of the visitor center’s impact on length of stay," he said, adding that it has declined in the past five years from the average tourist spending four days in the area to less than two days.

Peter Pino, the cultural resource manager for the Zia Pueblo near Albuquerque, reminded the other participants that the economic prosperity of Native Americans should also be considered in any development plan for the park.

"Without the treasures left by our ancestors, (wealthy, white business people) would have nothing to promote," Pino said, adding that the ruin sites were "never abandoned."

"The spirits of our ancestors still occupy them," he said, "and you have to develop them with that in mind."

Pino said it is high time that the descendants of the Anasazi benefit from tourism at the park beyond the "pennies" they get for demonstrating crafts and ceremonial dances.

"We want to participate," he said. "There needs to be more sharing of (business) activities and resources."

Wiese said another objective of the center would be to distribute the 650,000 annual visitors, who now are greatly concentrated in the summer months, more evenly by encouraging people to come in the spring and fall "shoulder seasons" and the holidays, now that more families are traveling then because of the growing trend toward year-round school programs.

He also pointed out that visitors from other countries, who make up about a third of the total, prefer to travel during those times as well.