For six years, Murray Klauber chased his improbable dream to build the area's first five-star hotel and a high-tech conference center across from a fuel depot at Tampa's port.

The colorful founder of the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort on Longboat Key gave up Thursday, saying rising construction costs and changing real estate economics doomed the $426-million project.

Klauber faced a Saturday deadline to pay the Tampa Port Authority $546,000 to lease 11 acres on Ybor Channel.

Instead of showing up for a meeting to close the deal Thursday morning, he e-mailed a letter stating that he wouldn't pursue the project, said port director Richard Wainio.

His plans were as ambitious as the name, Tampa Bay International Technology Center.

The complex was to include a conference center with two amphitheaters, an exhibition floor the size of a football field and conference rooms, all equipped to beam corporate meetings worldwide.

Klauber said he had signed a deal with luxury chain Fairmont Hotels & Resorts to manage the 349-room, five-star property. His partnership planned to sell 216 high-end condos.

Investors shied away, he said, worried the units wouldn't sell in Florida's oversaturated condo market. Escalating construction costs drove the project's price tag so high that Klauber and a handful of friends who invested with him couldn't make an acceptable return, he said.

The port authority first granted him a lease option in 2001 for the site just north of the agency's headquarters on Channelside Drive. He won repeated extensions to round up financing and solidify plans.

Critics called his idea "pie in the sky." The Tampa Bay area isn't ready for an big ultra-luxury hotel, said hospitality industry experts, much less one on the port's gritty waterfront.

Wainio, who came to the port in 2005, was disappointed, but not surprised, the project died.

"Did I give it much of a chance of happening after what I've seen the last year and a half? No," he said.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.