The funding search for the proposed $100 million Niagara Experience Center now includes the possibility of having a hotel on the attraction site, the project’s chairman said Thursday.

While more than $10 million has been dedicated to the family-oriented tourist center envisioned for downtown, officials are now looking toward restaurateurs, major retailers as well as hoteliers to set up shop on the site.

Such a situation would breathe fiscal life into a project seemingly ignored by the governor’s office of late, supporters said.

Paul Dyster, chairman of the experience center’s board of directors, said the group is looking to move forward with private investment.

Officials are also looking to unveil major details about the project’s future, including a preferred site, by the end of this month.

Officials had previously said one of the targeted sites includes One Niagara, property at 360 Rainbow Boulevard North, and owned by Frank Parlato Jr.

Project supporters will keep pushing for the project through the changes ahead in the governor’s office, according to Dyster, and they will “fight for” and then “capture” the American side’s fair share of the tourist market through the project.

Work on the planned attraction — the idea for which developed in a grassroots manner within the community — is nearing the end of the feasibility portion. Officials are nearing the end of economic analysis work, Dyster said.

State officials committed $10 million to the project in March 2002. Since then, officials have moved forward, hiring California theme-park designers BRC Imagination Arts.

The company was hired to design a facility that would tell the story of Niagara Falls’ natural history through technological effects seen in places like Epcot Center at Disney World.

BRC Imagination Arts’ resume includes work at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Universal Studios’ Animation Celebration in Osaka, Japan, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.

One feature Dyster hopes to work into the design is a public ice-skating rink. Such a proposal would be the first return of skating to Downtown since the Seneca Niagara Falls Gaming Corp. took possession of E. Dent Lackey Plaza.

To see the project through to completion will take a wide effort, Dyster said.

“For something like this to happen, you really have to rally the whole community,” he said.

Local historian Paul Gromosiak, also a board member for the experience center, said he’s hopeful about the change coming with November’s gubernatorial election.

“With the upcoming change in Albany, which we all know is going to happen, I hope and pray Gov. (Eliot) Spitzer will carry on with this endeavor here,” Gromosiak said, “and will maybe even do more than Gov. (George) Pataki as far as backing this endeavor with more money."