AS WORK ACTUALLY BEGAN (!!!) in preparation to adding 24 more riverview rooms to the downtown Hawthorn Suites in the hotel’s adjoining former restaurant space, there may be reason to wonder if there is a “missing link” to all this visitor housing activity not yet revealed to the public.

Sure, Greater Rome has long needed more top-notch hotel/motel rooms than appear available, particularly in times when major events are being held. But as many as now appear to be on the drawing boards? Not unless this community’s long-touted “bright future” has somehow been assured.

Consider: 24 more rooms for the Hawthorn and 100-plus at the Courtyard by Marriott apparently pretty definite right across the river. Then there is the announced, but otherwise silent, plan for an 81-room Fairfield Inn and Suites at the corner of East First Street and Turner McCall Boulevard perhaps because the land is hung up in a court proceeding. And some local group is apparently buying the former Skytop hotel/conference center off Chateau Drive, empty since 2009, in order to “bring a recognizable brand to the property.” At peak, that had 187 rooms.

That’s an awful lot of added hotel rooms to be filling nightly — 300 or more of them if all show up — without any apparent guarantee of a lot more regular overnight stay business in Greater Rome. Do the “insiders” with deep pockets know something the rest of us don’t?

Perhaps the Floyd County legislative delegation has secretly vowed a united front of opposition and frightened the Atlanta Falcons into the realization they won’t get their new billion-dollar stadium without moving it to Rome. Or, the Tennis Center of Georgia vision is a lot closer to full funding with state support than is currently believed.