Another plan for Dix Hill is making the rounds of some Raleigh VIPs this week.

The proposal, drawn up by John Hoal, a St. Louis, Mo.-based planner, calls for a major urban park on the site of the Dorothea Dix state hospital, with high-rise condominiums outside its borders.

Hoal, principal of H3 Studio, will show the plan to local business and government leaders, six City Council members and Jim Oblinger, chancellor of N.C. State University, in private meetings today and Thursday.

The Dix Visionaries, a group of well-heeled North Carolinians pushing for Dix Hill to become a destination park, hired Hoal and Chicago lawyer Greg Hummel for $150,000 earlier this year.

They wanted an alternative to the seven other plans presented by public and private groups so far, some of which called for much more intense residential and commercial development.

Greg Poole, a retired executive who is leading the Dix Visionaries, asked to show the plan to the Raleigh City Council and the legislative task force that studied the future of the Dix property.

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Mayor Charles Meeker said the two-hour presentation would take too long. Task force co-leader Rep. Jennifer Weiss, who represents Wake County, said the Dix Visionaries had already spoken during the planning process but she would be happy to meet with them later.

So Poole is making the rounds in private, including meetings with every City Council member except James West, who wasn't available. He hopes to talk with legislators during another visit by Hoal and Hummel in the next few months.

This week's visit comes at a crucial time for the Dix property. A state legislative task force met for the last time Monday without endorsing any specific recommendations for the site. The legislature will likely decide what to do with the land during the session that begins today.

On Tuesday, Hoal and Hummel met with a group of notables for tortellini and chocolate cake at the posh Second Empire restaurant on Hillsborough Street.

At the table were John Kane and Andy Andrews, two major local developers; Gordon Smith, founder of the Exploris museum; Kevin Brice, executive director of the Triangle Land Conservancy; and Joseph Huberman, a member of the Friends of Dorothea Dix Park, a nonprofit group.

Hoal told the group that a 300-acre park district would create demand for new condominiums and mixed-use buildings around the property eventually worth more than a billion dollars and generate millions of dollars in tourism each year.

He compared it to recent redevelopment projects in similarly sized cities, such as Forest Park in St. Louis, which he redesigned; Wade Oval in Cleveland, Ohio; and Centennial Park in Atlanta.

"We're trying to build a destination park supported by major redevelopment on the edges of the park," he said.

Hoal criticized a plan by a panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute for the state task force. He said it would keep as parkland only the areas that can't be developed because they are too steep or flood easily.

By the end of the two-hour lunch, Andrews and Kane were nodding their heads.