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Marriott Marquis: GRB Convention Center Hotel At 1777 Walker St.


Subdude

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This is great news... hopefully whenever they decide to build it, they will hire a quality architect. Right now, in contrast to the western side of downtown which is pretty much an exhibit hall of great late 20th century architecture, most of what has been built on the eastern side is rather prosaic.

The Hilton Americas looks nice enough from the freeway, but is a bland wall to the pedestrian in the park. Finger's condo tower is a fair imitation of a New York high rise and Minute Maid Park mimics well the ballparks of old, but neither really goes beyond Disney/Epcot level. No one's pulse was ever quickened by the George R. Brown. The Toyota Center is tasteful but underwhelming. The 3&4 Houston Center/Park Shops/Four Seasons complex is one of the ugliest excrescences of 70's-80's anti-urbanism to be found anywhere, and the taller skyscrapers are a mixed bag.

Maybe the city will recognize the need for a landmark here and hire somebody like Cesar Pelli. Then again, I could be dreaming.

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Well, according to today's Chronicle article, they have to sell the Hilton to free up some funds.

What startled me is, while I knew the city had a hand in the Hilton, I thought they simply gave them some tax breaks. Does this mean COH shared in some of the profits?

But if they complete the sale are able to get another major hotel constructed, then it would be a grand thing. I can understand the logic about the mid-level conventions. They are too small to be bussed in, and too big to always being able to find a block of hotels in a given area.

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I was reading that.....maybe they'll bring in ben reyes and betty maldonado to assist?

As consultants, of course.

Interesting that one of the City's biggest scandals eventually produced a hotel that may produce a $70 million profit when sold. Only took 10 years and a couple of prison terms. Nice return, if you ask me.

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a hotel that may produce a $70 million profit when sold

But, but, but... it costs taxpayer money! No tourist will ever come to Houston! Let Las Vegas and Orlando be convention destinations, their climate is better! No public money to private entities! This only benefits a select few! What's so great about downtown! Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!1111

[/backward illiterate rednecks in West Houston]

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I am hoping for a Westin Hotel. 1100 rooms with 80 condos on top. If they think they can market condos in the new Westin being built straddling I-10 in the middle of a busy hospital complex, then I'd certainly think a downtown property with park views could sell too.

The only thing I didn't like about the article was the line about it possibly looking like a mirror image of the Hilton. I'd prefer something different...

I don't think they meant to suggest that the design would be a mirror image... just that the location would mirror the location of the Hilton Americas vis a vis the GRB and Discover Green. I've hoped for a major convention hotel at that location. And I totally agree with your hope for a big hotel with condos on top.

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Interesting that one of the City's biggest scandals eventually produced a hotel that may produce a $70 million profit when sold. Only took 10 years and a couple of prison terms. Nice return, if you ask me.

looks like the feds are still at work too. the # of prison terms may be increasing.

Edited by musicman
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  • 1 month later...

The city is considering selling Hilton America's in part to help finance another convention hotel, in todays Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5599859.html

Mayor Bill White said he thought the city could get more than $350 million for the hotel, which would enable it to pay off its debt and create more financial flexibility to undertake another project.

They discuss placing the new hotel opposite of Hilton... which I assume means next to Discovery Tower north of DG. Pretty interesting.

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  • 2 weeks later...
The city is considering selling Hilton America's in part to help finance another convention hotel, in todays Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5599859.html

Mayor Bill White said he thought the city could get more than $350 million for the hotel, which would enable it to pay off its debt and create more financial flexibility to undertake another project.

They discuss placing the new hotel opposite of Hilton... which I assume means next to Discovery Tower north of DG. Pretty interesting.

That is the only place that they could put it. There is a big surface lot on the right side of Discovery Green in front of the GRB. It looked to be on the same size block that the Hilton is on.

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But, but, but... it costs taxpayer money! No tourist will ever come to Houston! Let Las Vegas and Orlando be convention destinations, their climate is better! No public money to private entities! This only benefits a select few! What's so great about downtown! Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!1111

[/backward illiterate rednecks in West Houston]

One does have to question the wisdom of building Discovery Green with public dollars and having this park bounded by two-block megastructures on the north and south and a five-block monoculture on its principal side. The remaining side is likely to have Discovery Tower, One Park Place, and Embassy Suites. That accounts for the entire perimeter. The fact that downtown Houston is the biggest employment spot in the South or Southwest and yet every downtown park and plaza is vacant except at lunch hour suggests that Discovery Tower (and probably Embassy Suites) is not going to enliven the park. One Park Place's handful of residents will be the only Houstonians likely to use the park for whom it won't be "out of sight, out of mind" for a lot of the times of the day at which they might use it. The GRB and 59 will obstruct any future pedestrian traffic from the east that it might have been used by, and will provide a thousand feet of dead-zone frontage that no area resident will have a reason to cross the park to get to. This is a major blow to its function as anything other than a periodically used garnish. So that leaves us with convention hotel guests (primarily evening and possibly morning use), affluent restaurant patrons, and people in between sessions of a meeting at the convention center (sporadic use throughout the day). It's a nice park for all that money, but it's not going to mean much to distracted visitors.* Having large structures with pitifully few points of entry or nodes of dense activity deactivating the edges of the Green, where fresh pedestrian flows from streets might have fed in - something that Central Park, by comparison, utterly relies upon - means that it really will be sort of a yard for businesspeople with business there, and not someplace that a Houstonian population would have much reason to wander into. On the other hand, if the double block on the north is perforated and made very permeable at ground level, it's still conceivable we could eventually have a neighborhood public space on our hands. But if all goes as appears to be planned, we'll have gotten a speculative real estate development spark plug for all our hopes and civic efforts - and from that development, more additional showpiece property tax dollars than actual human use.

*much as I want to believe otherwise, believe that it at least contributes to their minds some of the shade and the healthy division between hard work and unpresentable repine that Houston's fabric, out where conventioneers will never get to go, demonstrates and brings to grand scruffy life.

Edited by strickn
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One does have to question the wisdom of building Discovery Green with public dollars and having this park bounded by two-block megastructures on the north and south and a five-block monoculture on its principal side. The remaining side is likely to have Discovery Tower, One Park Place, and Embassy Suites. That accounts for the entire perimeter. The fact that downtown Houston is the biggest employment spot in the South or Southwest and yet every downtown park and plaza is vacant except at lunch hour suggests that Discovery Tower (and probably Embassy Suites) is not going to enliven the park. One Park Place's handful of residents will be the only Houstonians likely to use the park for whom it won't be "out of sight, out of mind" for a lot of the times of the day at which they might use it. The GRB and 59 will obstruct any future pedestrian traffic from the east that it might have been used by, and will provide a thousand feet of dead-zone frontage that no area resident will have a reason to cross the park to get to. This is a major blow to its function as anything other than a periodically used garnish. So that leaves us with convention hotel guests (primarily evening and possibly morning use), affluent restaurant patrons, and people in between sessions of a meeting at the convention center (sporadic use throughout the day). It's a nice park for all that money, but it's not going to mean much to distracted visitors.* Having large structures with pitifully few points of entry or nodes of dense activity deactivating the edges of the Green, where fresh pedestrian flows from streets might have fed in - something that Central Park, by comparison, utterly relies upon - means that it really will be sort of a yard for businesspeople with business there, and not someplace that a Houstonian population would have much reason to wander into. On the other hand, if the double block on the north is perforated and made very permeable at ground level, it's still conceivable we could eventually have a neighborhood public space on our hands. But if all goes as appears to be planned, we'll have gotten a speculative real estate development spark plug for all our hopes and civic efforts - and from that development, more additional showpiece property tax dollars than actual human use.

*much as I want to believe otherwise, believe that it at least contributes to their minds some of the shade and the healthy division between hard work and unpresentable repine that Houston's fabric, out where conventioneers will never get to go, demonstrates and brings to grand scruffy life.

"Pitifully few points of entry?" There are something like 8 or 9 points of entry, including 6 at street intersections. For a 12 acre park, I would hardly call that "pitifully few".

Lack of nodes of dense activity deactivating the edges of the green? Hotels, convention center, office buildings, high-rise apartment buildings? How are those not nodes of dense activity?

Showing a lack of use at other downtown green spaces is hardly proof that hotel, office building, and apartment building dwellers will not use Discovery Green. There is nothing like Discovery Green currently downtown or anywhere else in Houston.

The "double block" on the north end, the permeability of which you see as the only possible way to save the park, is not even a double block. It is only perhaps 1 1/2 blocks, and given that Houston's downtown blocks are small to begin with, it's hard to see that as a major impediment to the viability of the park.

IMO, a mix of activities around the edges of the Green is far preferable to surrounding it with apartment buildings. A mix of uses is more likely to lead to usages around the clock.

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One does have to question the wisdom of building Discovery Green with public dollars and having this park bounded by two-block megastructures on the north and south and a five-block monoculture on its principal side. The remaining side is likely to have Discovery Tower, One Park Place, and Embassy Suites. That accounts for the entire perimeter. The fact that downtown Houston is the biggest employment spot in the South or Southwest and yet every downtown park and plaza is vacant except at lunch hour suggests that Discovery Tower (and probably Embassy Suites) is not going to enliven the park. One Park Place's handful of residents will be the only Houstonians likely to use the park for whom it won't be "out of sight, out of mind" for a lot of the times of the day at which they might use it. The GRB and 59 will obstruct any future pedestrian traffic from the east that it might have been used by, and will provide a thousand feet of dead-zone frontage that no area resident will have a reason to cross the park to get to. This is a major blow to its function as anything other than a periodically used garnish. So that leaves us with convention hotel guests (primarily evening and possibly morning use), affluent restaurant patrons, and people in between sessions of a meeting at the convention center (sporadic use throughout the day). It's a nice park for all that money, but it's not going to mean much to distracted visitors.* Having large structures with pitifully few points of entry or nodes of dense activity deactivating the edges of the Green, where fresh pedestrian flows from streets might have fed in - something that Central Park, by comparison, utterly relies upon - means that it really will be sort of a yard for businesspeople with business there, and not someplace that a Houstonian population would have much reason to wander into. On the other hand, if the double block on the north is perforated and made very permeable at ground level, it's still conceivable we could eventually have a neighborhood public space on our hands. But if all goes as appears to be planned, we'll have gotten a speculative real estate development spark plug for all our hopes and civic efforts - and from that development, more additional showpiece property tax dollars than actual human use.

*much as I want to believe otherwise, believe that it at least contributes to their minds some of the shade and the healthy division between hard work and unpresentable repine that Houston's fabric, out where conventioneers will never get to go, demonstrates and brings to grand scruffy life.

Wow.

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The total cost of the park is estimated to be $81 million, of which $41 million was donated by the City of Houston through contributions of the land and a street right-of-way. The balance of the cost of the park, $40 million, will be raised by the Conservancy.

from their website.

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what would be the odds of a hotel/condo as opposed to strictly a hotel?

Probably not tremendously high. Convention hotels are all about volume, and that means that they're catering to a more general public and aren't going to be of the same kind of exclusive five-star quality that can support condos.

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Probably not tremendously high. Convention hotels are all about volume, and that means that they're catering to a more general public and aren't going to be of the same kind of exclusive five-star quality that can support condos.

While generally true, this hasn't been the case with Texas' newest convention hotels.

Austin's Hilton Convention Center Hotel that opened in 2004 has 802 rooms and 93 condos on the top 5 floors of the tower.

San Antonio's Grand Hyatt Convention Hotel will have 1,000 rooms and 147 condos on the top 9 floors. It's currently under construction.

Fort Worth also has a convention hotel under construction. The Omni will have 604 rooms and 97 condos on the top floors.

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While generally true, this hasn't been the case with Texas' newest convention hotels.

Points well taken. In spite of that, I still consider it doubtful. Going forward, all but the most expensive condos are likely to be pretty hard to justify given prevailing conditions in the capital markets.

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I don't think it will be that big of a stretch. Having condos adds to the bottom line of a hotel. The four seasons have residents inside and a variety of Hotels around town act as such to a variety of people.

Don't forget that until everybody went ga-ga over condos, those Four Seasons units were apartments.

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Don't forget that until everybody went ga-ga over condos, those Four Seasons units were apartments.

Some of them are still apartments. The conversion to condos didn't include all of the old apartment floors. In fact, the Four Seasons just spent a few million upgrading the furniture and interior design in the largely corporate units.

I think that if The Finger Cos can achieve a high occupancy level at the rates they plan on charging, that a residential component on the top of a new convention hotel would likely be a sure thing.

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As long as the condos will sell, they make an easy way to fund the accompanying hotel construction. Given recent shakeouts in the housing markets, these condos are harder to move, but not impossible in the right project

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm suprised no one has posted on this Chron article from today:

DT Hilton Officially For Sale

Houston Convention Center Hotel Corp. has hired real estate firm CB Richard Ellis to sell the property through a process that also will seek development proposals for a second convention hotel.

"The ideal buyer will buy the existing hotel and build the new one," said Richard Campo, chairman of the city-chartered group that owns the property and contracts with Hilton Hotels Corp. to manage it.

At the end of the article, though, some real estate people seem skeptical this deal will get done with the current problems in the financial market.

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"Carolan says the marketing period will run for four to six weeks." (from globest.com article)

So what does that mean exactly? That they'll market it before they start taking bids? Or that they'll only market it for that long?

Edited by lockmat
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Houston is under-represented by the major hotel chain downtown. If the 1000+ rooms at Hilton Americas are not enough, it would be good to have another large alternative (e.g. Marriott, Starwood, etc.). However if this is truly the case, the citizens of Houston should not need to provide any funds for the development - this is their opportunity to collect on the investement in GRB & the Hilton

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Houston is under-represented by the major hotel chain downtown. If the 1000+ rooms at Hilton Americas are not enough, it would be good to have another large alternative (e.g. Marriott, Starwood, etc.). However if this is truly the case, the citizens of Houston should not need to provide any funds for the development - this is their opportunity to collect on the investement in GRB & the Hilton

To skip my blathering, read the last paragraph. You

Edited by ricco67
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