TIM WHITMIRE of the Charlotte Observer reports: -- While Charlotteans cannot agree to build even one state-of-the-art arena, two such buildings are under consideration in Louisville - one to lure the Charlotte Hornets, another to house the University of Louisville men's and women's basketball teams.

Members of the city's Board of Aldermen are to meet in a special session today, when they are expected to approve spending $50,000 for consultants to complete Mayor Dave Armstrong's plan for a downtown NBA arena. That would extend the city's courtship of the Hornets at least another month, as the city and its consultants crunch numbers ahead of a January deadline set by team co-owner Ray Wooldridge for determining the franchise's future.

Wooldridge and Armstrong still must meet several challenges to complete a deal that would transform the Charlotte Hornets into the Kentucky Colonels.

Those include:

Crafting an agreement that satisfies the Hornets, the city and several other key participants - most importantly, the Kentucky state government;

Resolving potential conflicts with the University of Louisville's arena plan and overcoming university opposition to the NBA;

Convincing aldermen and a so-far lukewarm general public that Louisville needs pro sports.

As one source involved in the debate said last week, "That guy (Wooldridge) is going from a frying pan (in Charlotte) to a boiling pit."

Layers of government The NBA arena deal taking shape in Louisville is complex. Under Armstrong's proposal, the city would issue bonds to build the arena, but the debt would be paid off with a combination of city, county and state money. Other payments would come from the Hornets, in the form of rent and a ticket surcharge on basketball games at the building.

Though not directly involved in the arena deal, Louisville-based Tricon Global Restaurants, parent of KFC, is a key participant. Their having offered the Hornets a reported 20-year, $100 million offer to name the building the KFC Center and change the team's name to the Colonels is a primary factor making Louisville a contender for the team.

Politicians and residents also have expressed concerns that $259 million in bonds for the arena could saddle a new city-county government being formed with debt for decades.

Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton has said the state's contribution - up to $5 million annually - is contingent on the arena being run by the state's Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, which operates the city's current arena, Freedom Hall.

Patton's budget director, Jim Ramsey, and the president of the Fair and Exposition Center, Harold Workman, have said they were not consulted about Armstrong's preliminary plan.

And the ticket surcharge, which consultants estimate would generate $1.8 million in the arena's first year, would have to be approved by generally anti-tax state legislators when they return to session in January. State Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, who chairs Louisville's legislative delegation, told The (Louisville) Courier-Journal that the chance of the ticket tax passing "looks bleak."

"Very few people are going to vote for a tax, no matter if it's a fee, license or surcharge," she said.

Ed Glasscock, a lawyer who has led Louisville's NBA campaign, agrees that the ticket tax's prospects are uncertain, at best.

Steve Magre, president of the Louisville Board of Aldermen, believes state government -- whether Patton or the Legislature - will have the final say on an NBA arena.

He said it will be crucial for the mayor to include all affected parties as the negotiations move forward - something he hasn't done so far.

"I would hope that the mayor will allow an open door," he said. "If he's not willing to do that I think it's going to be very difficult for seven or eight aldermen to approve it."

No desire to share Another major wrinkle is the University of Louisville, which wants either a new on-campus arena or a total overhaul of Freedom Hall, where the men's team has played for 46 seasons. Workman, University of Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich, men's basketball coach Rick Pitino and school President John Shumaker were among those who attended a meeting Friday to discuss modernizing Freedom Hall.

The school's wish list - expanded capacity, between 25 and 30 new luxury boxes, club seating, a practice facility, offices, expanded locker rooms and improved lighting and sight lines - made it clear the university envisions a new arena on par with what's being proposed downtown.

That would make the two buildings competitors for non-basketball events. Workman said such a situation likely would leave the Fair and Exposition Center worse off financially, even if it were running both buildings, and Magre agreed.

"We can't have the infrastructure burden of two arenas," he said. "We're not large enough to house 200 events in both arenas."

Wooldridge said he is open to sharing a downtown arena with the university, but Pitino is opposed.

"The reason I'm here is because of the passion for basketball at the collegiate and high school level," he said. "We're talking about the University of Louisville, and I'm selfish. A downtown arena does not do anything for the University of Louisville.

Again, Magre thinks it may take gubernatorial action to decide the issue.

"Clearly we have two powerful entities going on parallel tracks that are two miles apart," he said. "At some point, the state will have to get that resolved."

Lukewarm about NBA The NBA's decision to launch a franchise in Charlotte in 1988 is widely regarded as a watershed in the city's history - the event that ended the "C-H factor" that once saw Charlotte confused with Charlottesville, Va., and Charleston, S.C. Backers of Louisville's NBA campaign have made a similar pitch, with Wooldridge pushing the theory that worldwide broadcasts of NBA games will make Louisville a global economic player.

Doug Cobb, former president of the local chamber of commerce, Greater Louisville Inc., argues that pro sports would help Louisville attract and retain young professionals who have deserted the city in the thousands over the past quarter-century, resulting in a much-discussed "brain drain."

"I think the NBA decision is a pivot point for our community," Cobb told aldermen at a public forum Saturday. "I think it's divided Louisville along classic lines of `We can't do it, it's too big, we can't take it on,' vs. the younger voices that say, `We want to make this a better place for young people and young families.'"

But polls have shown Louisvillians are lukewarm about the NBA. Only about half say they would like to see an NBA franchise in the city, and even fewer are willing to spend public money to make it happen.

Louisville bears little resemblance to budding New South metropolises such as Charlotte and Norfolk, Va. Just across the Ohio River from Indiana, the region, known locally as "Kentuckiana," is more Midwestern than Southern and, unlike many up-and-coming cities, already has a long sports history.

The Kentucky Derby has been run at Churchill Downs since 1875 and attracts crowds of more than 125,000 on the first Saturday in May. And the University of Louisville men's basketball team won two NCAA titles in the 1980s and is expected to compete for more under Pitino.

"This is one of the few states its size in the country that doesn't have a pro team," Pitino said, arguing that that makes Kentucky special. "It's pure amateurism."

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