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Originally Posted by austlar1
Thanks for the info. I am still curious as to whether construction (as opposed to site clearing) is underway?? Does anybody know how much private exhibit and convention space will be contained in this hotel. I think all the other new big hotels near the CC have upwards of 100,000 sq. ft. each. Will this hotel follow suit?
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The last official count I've heard is that it will have 600 rooms and 60,000 sq ft of space. That's significant for its size.
FYI HOTEL RAMBLE: Group hotels (larger convention hotels) put a big emphasis on their rooms to space ratio -- the number of rooms vs the sq footage of meeting space available. The lower the ratio, the better positioned the hotel is to succeed with in-groups and conferences. So in the Marriott's case, they might set aside 400-450 of their total rooms for groups/conventions, leaving the rest for transient business (transient = business travelers, leisure travelers, etc). So the Marriott's 450 group rooms would get 60k sq ft to meet in. That's a LOT.
In larger cities where space is at a premium, rooms to space ratios are very high (easy to build lots of rooms ontop of one another in NYC, for instance, but very hard to add contiguous ballrooms or exhibits halls). Anyhow -- I originally though the Marriott -- because of its small footprint -- would go the way of a bigger city hotel, and function more as a dormitory for the new CC expansion -- lots of rooms for conventions and little meeting space for in-house groups. But that's not the case. They've stacked a lot of meeting space in that podium, and will be a direct competitor of the Hilton across the way.