JEFFERSON CITY, MO. ? Kansas City’s downtown redevelopment efforts received another boost Tuesday as a state board revised the tax breaks available for a basketball Hall of Fame and performing arts center.

Mayor Kay Barnes, who pleaded for the tax incentives, pledged the state would be rewarded with tax-generating tourists attracted from across the nation.

The Missouri Development Finance Board approved an extra $4 million in state income tax credits for the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, to be located at the new Sprint Center arena.

It also granted more time for the city to make use of $25 million in state tax credits previously approved for a Metropolitan Kansas City Performing Arts Center.

“Both of them will contribute dramatically to the economic base of the state of Missouri,” Barnes said.

The basketball hall of fame, which is to include numerous interactive attractions, now has received a total of $6 million in state tax breaks – accounting for more than one-quarter of the project’s $21.5 million cost. The arena and Hall of Fame are scheduled to open in September 2007.

“I am convinced this will be a major nationwide attraction,” Barnes told the state board.

A feasibility study by St. Louis-based Development Strategies Inc. projects the Hall of Fame will attract 312,000 visitors its first year, rising annually to 504,500 people by its 10th year.

That would be more tourists than attend the professional Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But Development Strategies President Bob Lewis said Kansas City should fare better because it’s a larger city, easier to get to and has other tourist attractions.

At least one state board member remained skeptical.

While the Hall of Fame will be “a nice enhancement” to the new arena, “it is not an end attraction. No one is going to come from anywhere just to view that facility,” said Paul Lindsey, of Lebanon, the only board member to vote against the additional tax credits.

Ground is expected to be broken next year on Kansas City’s new performing arts center, now projected to cost $326 million. The state’s tax credits initially were to be issued this year and last year, but the project has taken longer than expected.

Voters in September 2004 rejected a regional sales tax that would have raised $50 million for the Sprint center. That prompted supporters to consider whether an alternative site would be cheaper. They ultimately decided to stick with the current location, near Kansas City’s convention center.

Last year, the state board allowed $12 million in performing arts center tax credits designated for 2004 to instead be used in 2006. Tuesday’s vote allowed $12.5 million in tax credits designated for this year to instead be reauthorized for 2007.

The center’s leading benefactor, Julia Irene Kauffman, chairwoman of the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation, said the project has $231 million in financial commitments so far, more than half of which comes from Kauffman family sources.