MONDAY MORNING

The Planning Never Stops

Staff members representing D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and D.C. Council members are meeting to plan -- once again -- the future of the old Washington Convention Center site barely a block from the new center downtown.

There have been plans for a residential and retail complex on the 10.5-acre site for years, supported by Williams's advisers. But last month, local architect Ted Mariani convinced several council members, who must approve plans for the site, that a huge hotel and underground expansion space for the new convention center should be included in any project.

Joe Sternlieb, newly hired from the quasi-public Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District to coordinate the project for the District; longtime economic development staffer James Arthur Jemison; and consultant Ron Kaplan are meeting with council staffs to agree on what should be put on the site. In recent weeks they have met privately three days a week in a conference room in the Wilson Building, for two to three hours at a time.

The mayor's staff wants a compromise by late June and council approval for a team of developers led by Hines Interests LP to develop the retail and residential buildings.

Williams's advisers have said they are open to modest hotel and underground meeting space. They have not yielded on additional exhibition space, which would be much larger than meeting space and would need truck access, said people who have been in the meetings such as John Ralls of council Finance Committee Chairman Jack Evans's staff.

Council members who favor more exhibition space, particularly Evans and Chairman Linda W. Cropp, are adamant that the plan include it.