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There is little activity inside the small meeting room at the Hyatt Hotel in Downtown.

Two people man a desk looking bored, one working on a Sudoku puzzle but ready at any moment to offer a soda, coffee or a 3-inch-thick binder filled with a detailed land development pitch.

Not exactly light reading.

But the fact those people - workers for SunCal Cos. - are available is more to the company's point.

The Irvine, Calif., land developer, holders of 55,000 acres on the West Side, has launched a public-relations effort aimed at educating Albuquerque residents about the heady subject of tax increment development districts.

The Downtown meeting room - which had received just 13 visitors from Sunday through Thursday - is the company's attempt to make its representatives and its public documents easily accessible to the public.

"We wanted to reach out to members of our community to say, `If you're interested, we're available,' " said Will Steadman, president of the company's New Mexico operations. "The documents, we'll make them available above and beyond the normal availability through the public record."

The paperwork contained in each thick binder is SunCal's application filed in October for tax increment development districts with Bernalillo County.

The county last month granted approval to create nine TIDDs within a 3,950-acre development SunCal plans in unincorporated Bernalillo County.

TIDDs, however, haven't received the same level of support among the vocal public.

Under a TIDD, a project developer would receive a percentage of the future property and gross receipts taxes generated in the district to pay for infrastructure, with the hope the development will draw jobs to the community.

To critics, many of whom sounded off at recent City Council debates over the issue, TIDDs are meant to generate development in blighted areas or to promote infill. To offer them to a company like SunCal, in undeveloped land, equals giving a public subsidy to well-monied developer that could otherwise afford infrastructure costs.

But Steadman and SunCal are trying to promote TIDDs as an economic-development generator.

The company recently created a Web site, Tiddfacts.com, in which it extols the virtues that would come from SunCal's development.

The 3,950-acre project, called the Upper Petroglyphs, will have a mix of housing, retail and commercial uses, schools and hundreds of acres of open space, the Web site says. Within it, 20,000 new jobs are expected, it says.

"The TIDDs will help provide new, good paying jobs at a time when our state and national economy is slowing down," the Web site says.

SunCal also anticipates that, once completed, its project will generate more than $1 billion in annual sales tax revenue, $5 million a year to Albuquerque Public Schools, and $53 million a year in new revenue to the state, according to the Web site.

SunCal at an undetermined time plans to apply to the city for a TIDD on about 1,500 acres it holds within Albuquerque's boundaries, Steadman said.

"We think it's a great opportunity within our project to help recruit companies to bring jobs to the West Side," Steadman said. "We are taking economic development seriously. (TIDDs) are certainly a beneficial tool that help bring jobs to our community."

City Councilor Michael Cadigan, a chief critic of TIDDs in undeveloped lands such as the area SunCal owns, isn't buying that argument.

For starters, he said much of the SunCal property within the Bernalillo County TIDDs is zoned for residential use rather than commercial or industrial, Cadigan said.

Cadigan also said he's seen no evidence that SunCal has a history of creating jobs within its developments. By contrast, Forest City Covington, the developer of the Mesa del Sol project in Southeast Albuquerque and recipient of a city-granted TIDD, has vast experience in luring industry, he said.

"I'm not saying they won't create jobs. I'm just saying it's a big gamble," Cadigan said. "Creating jobs is serious business. You're competing with heavy hitters from all over the country. Cities are bending over backward to give subsidies and make things more attractive. I'd feel more comfortable with that claim if they had a history in other cities."

Steadman said they will be serious players on the economic development front, with Luisa Casso, the former head of Albuquerque's Downtown Action Team, leading the effort.

The company is also part of a joint venture which owns the Cordero Mesa business park on the West Side, and has offered 75 acres of land for future expansion of electric carmaker Tesla Motors' planned manufacturing plant there.

"I think some of the issues raised are that we don't have an economic development team, and we don't have a plan," Steadman said. "We do have a plan. We have different industry sectors we're targeting. We've only been in this project a year. We're marshaling all of our staff, all of our resources to putting us in a position to being a big component of our region's and state's economic development activities."