Bringing a presidential debate to Lawrence in 2004 wouldn’t be inexpensive.

Organizers say they’d need to raise more than $500,000 if they want the candidates to square off here as part of the city’s 150th birthday celebration.

“I feel very confident about it,” said Clenece Hills, president of the Lawrence Sesquicentennial Commission. “But what I want the community to know is almost all money raised goes back into the community to pay people to put in cable lines and telephone lines, staging, transportation, food and hotel space. We’ll get it all back, and we might generate a little more money than that.”

The money issue was one of several topics discussed at a debate planning meeting Friday morning at the Lawrence Public Library.

The $500,000 wouldn’t be the entire cost of the debate it’s only the Lawrence-area share. The Commission on Presidential Debates also would have national sponsors.

Hills said she expected the money to come from a variety of sources.

“We know we’re going to have to seek some corporate sponsorship and institutional sponsorship,” she said. “There are lots of possibilities in the Kansas City, Lawrence and Topeka area.”

Money isn’t the only challenge left for organizers. They’re also working to secure sites for the debate and approximately 1,400 media staffers who would be in town to cover it.

Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and International Programs at Kansas University and a nationally recognized debate expert, said the Lied Center was the probable location for the debate, with a KU athletic facility such as Anschutz Sports Pavilion serving as a media workroom.

Carlin said organizers also were having discussions with area hotel operators, telling them they might want to block out the first two weeks of October for the debate.

The Commission on Presidential Debates will announce its requirements for the 2004 presidential debates next April.

Applications from cities will be due in July 2003. By then, Hills said, organizers must have their site plans completed and pledges for the money. They still are working to determine how pledges will be received.

The debate commission will announce its sites for the three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate in December 2003.

Carlin said the debate would be a communitywide event. Members of the media could speak to school children, and classes could tour the set of the debate.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” she said. “Just all the celebrity gawking is fun.”

Hills said she was confident Lawrence could land a debate.

“I’d love to see it happen for Lawrence,” she said. “We have so many people with so many diverse views. It’s the ideal location for a debate.”