Drury Hotels, which won city approval last year to redevelop the former hospital property in downtown Santa Fe, now says it doesn't expect to begin work until at least early 2011.

The planned hotel is one of several projects in recent years that have yet to get under way.

"We are watching the economy," Brian Nenninger, project manager for the planned Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe, said Friday in discussing the timing of various phases of the development.

Nenninger, based in San Antonio, Texas, said architectural and design work is proceeding and the hotel chain could apply for construction permits late this year.

Depending on "cash flow," he said, the family held company's directors could decide to begin with either the smaller, less expensive conversion of the 1910-vintage Marian Hall into a 30-room boutique hotel or the major renovation and expansion of the 1954 St. Vincent Hospital structure into a 175-room hotel.

"I really doubt that we will be doing them parallel," he said. "They will be done sequentially, but I'm not sure which first."

Work on a third phase, in which more than 60 suites and an underground garage will be built on what is now a parking lot south of Marian Hall, "will probably be awhile," Nenninger said.

Meanwhile, the company will be required to contribute funds for a future city project to install traffic signals a block away at the intersection of Paseo de Peralta and Marcy Street.

City Traffic Engineer John Romero said a study performed for Drury documented an existing need for signals at what is now a four-way stop. He said Drury will pay a "fair share" for improvements based on the new hotel's expected traffic impact on that intersection.

Romero said the city hasn't yet come up with a design, a time frame or all the funds needed for the intersection changes. "At the time the city does choose to move forward with design and construction," he said, "that will follow its own public process."

Romero noted that traffic on that narrow section of the Paseo de Peralta loop around downtown often becomes backed up. He said engineers would try to "interconnect and coordinate" new signals at the Marcy Street intersection with other traffic lights on Paseo de Peralta.

Nenninger said progress on the Drury project isn't tied to a stalled mixed-use proposal for redevelopment of 5.5 acres adjoining the site that the Archdiocese of Santa Fe leased to Hunt Development Group.

A spokesman for Hunt said late last year that plans for retail uses, restaurants, condominiums and underground parking were put on hold because of the downturn in the national economy. An official with the nearby Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi has said it might be four or five years before the economy recovers sufficiently to allow that project to go forward.

Part of the archdiocese property, the vacant St. Francis Cathedral School on East Alameda at Paseo de Peralta, has been leased to the New Mexico School for the Arts, a charter high school. The school opens in August with 150 students, with an enrollment of 300 expected in a few years. The school lease runs for four years, with an option to renew.

A spokeswoman couldn't be reached Friday for Greer Enterprises, which went through city reviews for two downtown redevelopment projects. The City Council two years ago granted the firm approval for the four-story Villas at the Lensic condominium project adjoining the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

In 2006, the city Planning Commission endorsed a still-unrealized proposal by Greer Enterprises and First National Bank of Santa Fe for a mixed-use development of commercial and residential uses just off the Plaza, between Palace Avenue and West San Francisco Street.

However, another downtown redevelopment project recently held a ribbon-cutting. Developers who converted the former La Esquina Building on the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Marcy Street into a residential/commercial project have begun marketing the upper floors for use as luxury condominiums.