Officials now acknowledge that projections show the rapidly surging prices of those commodities, as well as copper and aluminum, may push construction costs considerably higher than the budgeted $700 million.
Asked how large the gap might be, outgoing Convention Center president Al Mezzaroba said yesterday, "The estimate we have right now is $90 million."
Rendell, in an interview, said he believed the shortfall might be even bigger, since bids from the myriad subcontractors working on the expansion have yet to be received.
Efforts to build a bigger center - the current building opened in 1993 - began early this year, and demolition work is nearly complete. The project is expected to be finished in 2011, and conventions have been booked for that year.
Last summer, state lawmakers, with some reluctance, approved using $700 million in revenue from slot-machine parlors to pay for its construction. Yesterday, Rendell said the legislature was unlikely to OK a dime more.
"There's no appetite in Harrisburg to go back and do more than $700 million. Even I wouldn't ask," he said.
Rendell's comments came moments before he signed legislation that would allow the city to impose a "hospitality promotion tax" of up to 1.5 percent, which would raise hotel-room taxes to 15.5 percent.
Some of that revenue - City Council will decide how much in the fall - would be directed to the Convention Center to make up for the shortfall.
"The expansion is constantly in peril because of increasing costs," Rendell told dozens of regional tourism and hotel executives during a news conference celebrating the bill's passage. "Without those extra [hotel-tax] dollars, I'm not sure we have an expansion of the Convention Center."
But those dollars may not be enough.
