CHEYENNE - The woodwork is carefully matched and the chandeliers are hand-crafted Italian glass. The rugs were specially made in England and the rooms are loaded with high-tech infrastructure.

"It's more money that most people would want to spend," Shaun Powis, general manager of the Little America Hotel and Resort in Cheyenne, says, while declining to disclose just how much money that might be.

But cost containment is hardly the point. The object is to create a meeting and convention space after the high style of the five-diamond Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, and Earl Holding is not cutting corners.

That would be Robert Earl Holding, owner of hotels, ski resorts, cattle ranches and the Sinclair Oil Company, whose net worth was listed in 2006 as $4.2 billion on the Forbes list of the 400 Richest Americans.

When Cheyenne officials began thinking about a convention center, it was in the context of a "vision" effort in which people take stock of their community and determine how they might like it to look in years hence.

During the process, Darren Rudloff, president of the Cheyenne Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, says a convention center garnered considerable support.

So Johnson Consulting of Chicago was hired to determine what, if any, type of publicly owned convention space Cheyenne might be able to support. While an events center was deemed impractical, there appeared to be enough market potential for a space devoted to such activities as conventions.

As local officials began to make more concrete plans, Holding indicated he would be willing step up with convention space at his local Little America if the city were willing to take a step back, to which the city agreed.

Little America in Cheyenne has embarked on a phased expansion that by April 2008 will result in 41,000 square feet being added to the existing building, about 26,000 square feet of which will be meeting space available for conventions, wedding receptions and cater-out functions, while the rest will be support space like a new kitchen and a promenade hallway.

Frank Nicholson Inc., of Acton, Mass., whose credits include Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons Ltd. hotels around the world, is the interior design firm on the project. The motif is traditional.

The grandest space will be a 13,500-square-foot ballroom with capacity for between 1,200 and 1,400 people at a sit-down dinner. New meeting rooms also will be added, and the total space will be divisible into 19 breakout rooms.

"What we decided to do was not add a convention center, but add on convention space," Powis says.

Little America plans to sell the facility on a regional basis. "I think we'll market it based on the fact that it's only 90 miles from Denver," Powis says. "I think we'll look largely to Wyoming groups and Front Range groups from Colorado to fill it … If Cheyenne has a premier facility to hold conventions, we think people from different regions will come and support it."

Eventually, Little America plans to add guest rooms, currently at 188, to support the convention business.

And the unfinished space already is being booked. The facility must be completed by April 16, 2008.

Rudloff said Johnson Consulting recommended a larger facility - one that included a trade show area - for Cheyenne. But aside from that big space, Little America's configuration generally mirrors the Johnson proposal.

The consulting firm projected demand of 134 events at their version of a center in the first year, including 116 non-exhibit events, representing 200 total event days. That number was expected to grow to 176 events, including 150 non-exhibit events, in five years for a total of 270 event days.

Doable, Johnson Consulting said, but by no means easy.

Rudloff agrees Cheyenne will have to hustle, but having such a fine facility to sell certainly helps.

"This expansion is going to put us on the radar screen of many meeting planners who've never considered Cheyenne, or perhaps even Wyoming, in the past," he said.

Business Editor Tom Mast can be reached at tom.mast@casperstartribune.net, or call 307-266-0574.