TAMPA - The Hillsborough County Tourist Development Council approved spending $82,500 for a market demand study for a proposed conference center in the West Shore Business District.

The council wants PricewaterhouseCoopers to determine whether there is a market before authorizing expenditure of money to study how to fund the conference center and what kind of competition it would present for the Tampa Convention Center.

That study will be on top of a $25,000 preliminary report that PricewaterhouseCoopers had previously prepared on the feasibility of a facility that could serve West Shore hotels seeking additional space to use for recruiting, meetings, conferences and other events.

West Shore hoteliers have said they need a conference center that might host athletic events such as volleyball tournaments to help fill 9,000 area hotel rooms on weekends when business demand drops off.

Mark Huey, Tampa's economic and urban development administrator, read a letter from Mayor Pam Iorio who said that construction of a meetings center would need to rely on private, rather than public money and should be co-located with a station on a proposed light rail line that Iorio and many members of the local business community support.