Don’t look now, but a long-talked-about proposal for a more than $1 billion expansion of Boston’s showcase convention hall is about to hit the fast track.

A group of business, civic and labor leaders is wrapping up a year-long study of the blockbuster plan, with a report due out by year end. And by all accounts, the 25-member Convention Partnership is poised to offer a strong endorsement to what could be the biggest new construction project to hit Greater Boston since the Big Dig.

Meanwhile, Gov. Deval Patrick’s resounding reelection victory also bodes well, with the governor – reenergized and with lots of political capital to burn – a big backer.

That state support is crucial, with a potentially bruising battle ahead on Beacon Hill, with legislation to push the project likely to start to take shape as we roll into 2011.

The proposal, in turn, has the potential to become a homegrown stimulus package for Greater Boston’s battered construction industry, with private development still lagging in the wake of the Great Recession.

Driving it is concern that Boston, while a popular convention destination, is losing out on shows simply because it doesn’t have enough space in its large, but apparently not large enough, 6-year-old convention hall.

“It makes a lot of sense, just because of all the shows we lose,” said Jim Coyle, president of the Boston Building Trades Council and a member of the panel weighing an expansion of Boston’s new convention complex.

Three-Part Harmony

Led by veteran public sector executive James Rooney, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which organized the blue ribbon panel, is quarterbacking this effort.

The new hall, which just opened in 2004, was slow to get rolling but has since proven to be a hit and can’t accommodate all the shows and events that now want to come to town.

Hence the proposed expansion of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, which is actually three different – and major – projects rolled into one.

First, there’s the expansion of the hall itself, which could cost $800 million – as much as it cost to build the original hall back in 2004. The panel studying expansion is also leaning towards some sort of publicly financed or subsidized hotel. Add to that a proposed expansion of the Boston Common garage, also controlled by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, and you are up to $1.5 billion, contends James Kirby, president of Boston-based Commercial Construction Consulting, who has been tracking the project.

With Patrick in the driver’s seat on Beacon Hill, some insiders see a fast start for the long-awaited expansion project, with legislation getting hammered out early next year. The expansion panel is under a Dec. 31 deadline, with copies of its report to be delivered to the governor as well as the state’s two top legislative leaders.

Given the size and complexity of the expansion project, it will likely take a year or two anyway to line up all the approvals and financial backing anyway, one insider noted.

Of course, anyone who thinks this is going to all be smooth sailing, even with a firm push by the governor, is in for a big surprise.

The overall price tag – which, as I have noted previously, the MCCA hasn’t been all that open to discussing – will inevitably stir debate.

All public projects these days tend to become punching bags, and there is no way a $1.5 billion expansion of what is already the largest building in New England is going to tip-toe through the State House without sparking some sort of a row.

If nothing else, the Pioneer Institute, our local conservative think tank, is likely to make sure the pot gets a good stir.

Priming The Pump

But the real lightning rod is a controversial idea taking root within the expansion proposal itself, under which the public sector would step in and build a 1,000- to 1,200-room hotel to ensure there are enough beds for all those additional conventioneers.

Right now, banks simply aren’t interested in taking on such ambitious and risky projects, expansion boosters note, with some solid evidence to back up their claims.

If the public sector will step in and get a centerpiece hotel built, the private sector will follow with new hotel projects of its own, contends Coyle, the union chief and member of the convention expansion panel.

“Here again, it’s water for the pump to be primed,” he said.

But getting support for a government authority to directly finance a new hotel is another matter altogether, even here in blue state Massachusetts. There’s more than a little bit of public cynicism about grand government undertakings right now, don’t you think? Nor are Boston’s numerous private hotels likely to be thrilled with having to go head to head with a giant, publicly subsidized competitor.

That said, the Greater Boston economy and its battered construction industry need a lift – and this may be just the right kind of stimulus needed to get jobless hard hats back to work.

Sure, the private sector is doing what it can, but right now there’s lots of talk about projects that might move forward someday soon, but little actual construction.

By contrast, a $1 billion-plus expansion of the convention center would put hundreds if not thousands of tradesmen and women back to work, Coyle notes.

And in contrast to the endless highway repaving and pothole filling expeditions the $787 billion federal stimulus package bought us, an expanded convention hall might just prove a bit more useful down the line, as well.