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Two words of warning for the supporters of a new luxury hotel in Greensboro: Royal Villa.

Boasting 347 rooms and a 10,000-square-foot convention center, it was billed as the biggest and best hotel complex from Murphy to Manteo.

One of the Royal Villa’s investors included the speaker of the state House at the time, Carl Stewart of Gastonia.

As an added amenity, the hotel hired a staff of “bellgirls” to carry baggage and direct guests to their rooms.

“They will be our true image to our guests,” the facility’s executive vice president told the Greensboro Record. “They have to be attractive persons.”

When it opened on West Meadowview Road near Randleman Road in December 1974, the Royal Villa hosted Gov. Jim Holshouser at its grand opening and a performance by the legendary R&B group, the Original Platters.

It was shiny and impressive (in a 1970s sort of way) with a sauna, a spacious ballroom, an exercise room, a disco and no fewer than 750 parking spaces to accommodate the anticipated crowds.

Less than four years later, it was gone.

In June 1975, the investors filed for reorganization and the hotel faced more than $1 million in liens as well as 60 lawsuits. In 1979, the Greensboro Housing Authority bought the buildings and property for $3.2 million and converted them into housing for the elderly. Even that venture ultimately failed, shutting down in 2000 and displacing 100 residents.

Among the many high hopes for Royal Villa 35 years ago was that it would help change the fortunes of a part of town not considered the most attractive, even in those days.

That was the original vision for a 200-room luxury hotel proposed today for downtown Greensboro.

But the outcome for Royal Villa turned out to be exactly the opposite. The location, across the street from what was then a Kmart and near a strip of fast-food restaurants, just didn’t suit its projected image. And the expected benefit from its proximity to Interstate 85 never materialized. Another interchange, at West Wendover Avenue, stole its thunder, growing so fast it grew out of control. Randleman Road merely grew worse.

Members of the City Council might bear that in mind as they consider whether to proceed on the new luxury hotel proposed by a Memphis developer.

Federal stimulus money and the city would pay most of the freight and, in an intriguing twist, the Ole Asheboro Neighborhood Association would have a stake in the profits. But there are more questions than answers:

-- Does Greensboro already have an oversupply of hotel rooms?

-- Why would this one succeed when at least two other recent downtown hotel projects have been canceled or placed on hold?

-- Who would be able and willing to pay the projected rate of $200 per room and are there enough of them?

This is not to say the new project shouldn’t receive serious and careful consideration. After all, some of the best ideas have bucked conventional wisdom.

Consider Southside, the vibrant, neotraditional mixed-use community on Martin Luther King Drive that no local developer would touch with a 150-foot pole. So someone from Charlotte stepped in and made it happen in a partnership with the city.

Then there was the most successful developer in Greensboro history, Joe Koury, who built a mall and convention center on High Point Road, a notion some people considered completely nuts at the time. The rest, as they say, is history.

The developer of the new hotel, Urban Hotel Group LLC, now has shifted the planned site to February One Place and Davie Street, which offers some intriguing advantages, including a more central location and access to already-existing banquet facilities in the Empire Room.

Urban Hotel Group also has established a partnership with Elm Street Center LLC, a group of businessmen who had envisioned their own 15-story hotel for that location.

But they still want the city to build a new $8 million parking deck for the hotel, as they also had requested for the South Elm/Lee Street location.

As long as the new optimism is leavened with hard numbers and hard facts, this latest twist is more than encouraging.

Meanwhile, what was once the old Royal Villa is now Heritage House, a 177-unit condominium complex. Much of its massive parking lot is unused. Yet you can still see the muted elegance of a grand hotel in its facade, and some of the promise it never fulfilled.

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big dreams and wondering why not rather than simply why. But before they decide the future of a new hotel, city leaders may want to revisit the fate of an old one.