By Eric Heisler

Of the Post-Dispatch

Missouri Research Park is about to get another amenity to offer its research and manufacturing tenants, a 100-room hotel that will overlook the Missouri Bluffs golf course.

The park, which faltered in the early part of this decade, has been growing along Highway 40 in St. Charles County over the last two years with the recovery of the financial and technology sectors.

Now, a Wingate Inn being built for $7.5 million will give companies in the 750-acre park more conference space for meetings as well as a place for out-of-town researchers, investors and customers to stay overnight.

"This is an attempt to put together a retreat type of environment," said Rick Finholt, the research park's director. "We asked our companies, and they told us, 'We need meeting space.' This is a service to them."

The hotel is also significant because it will be owned by a St. Louis-based religious group, the organization's first foray into hospitality properties.

Through an economic development fund, the Fifth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church invests in real estate. The church broke ground on the hotel this month.

Developed by the University of Missouri, the research park was conceived in the late 1980s as a way to replicate the success of Stanford Research Park in California and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

The concept was to lure technology companies with the promise of amenities and the chance to cluster around similar firms.

Today, the park is home to 15 companies, two federal agencies and nearly 2,000 employees. The hotel will add to the environment created by other amenities, such as the 18-hole golf course and walking trails, Finholt said.

Harold Whitfield, chief executive for the economic development arm of the church, said the hotel will appeal to research-park visitors as well as to tourists in Missouri's wine country and along the Katy Trail.

"This hotel will overlook the ninth hole of the golf course, and it will be visible from the highway," Whitfield said. "I would say it's a very good location."

Wingate is one of many hotel brands owned by Cendant Corp. The spot in Missouri Research Park was first identified by Cendant.

At the time, the church's nonprofit development arm was looking at a deal that would have made it the owner of a Cendant hotel in the Denver area, Whitfield

said. The deal fell through, but Cendant tapped the church for the Missouri property.

The hotel will be built by CBE Construction of St. Louis. The church will contract with Leisure Hotels & Resorts of Kansas City to run it.

Based in Los Angeles, the African Methodist Episcopal Church's fifth district stretches from Missouri to the West Coast. The development fund, which has a three-member staff, was established in 1977, based in St. Louis.

"The whole notion here is to generate an economic base and moneys other than what you'd get through the collection plate on Sunday for our religious mission," Whitfield said.

Often in the past, the church has been recruited to participate in development deals because of the tax shelter it brings as a nonprofit entity, he said.

Reporter Eric Heisler

E-mail: eheisler@post-dispatch.com

Phone: 314-340-8183