Developers of the Courtyard Marriott planned for the corner of Third and Florida streets downtown broke ground last week on the 135-room hotel, nearly two years after the project was announced.
Part of the reason it has taken so long to bring the project to fruition is because the developers, Windsor Aughtry Hotel Group, didn’t actually get the green light to move forward until last October, when the Metro Council approved the creation of a Tax Increment Financing district for the project.
Securing permits also took longer than expected. But the biggest factor behind the delay was the need to redesign the project in an effort to contain escalating costs. When the hotel was first announced in October 2014, Windsor Aughtry’s total investment was estimated at $22 million. Early this year, costs had increased nearly 10% to $24 million. After redesigning some elements of the project, costs are back down to an estimated $23 million.
Robert Ratcliff, whose Alexandria-based Ratcliff Construction is the general contractor on the project, says the biggest change to the hotel’s design has to do with the structural concrete. In the original plans, the building’s walls were going to be solid concrete masonry unit walls. Now, poured concrete columns will be used instead.
“Concrete block walls are a lot more expensive because there is a shortage of skilled masons in our area,” Ratcliffe says. “We can pour the columns a lot more quickly, save the owner some money and actually speed up the construction a little.”
Construction is scheduled to take 16 months to complete, and officials with Hospitality America, which will manage the property, hope to be open by November or December of next year.
While costs have increased since the project was announced, a silver lining in the delay is that occupancy in downtown hotels has inched up slightly, says Ben Blackwell, area manager of operations for Hospitality America.
Average occupancy among the seven peer hotels against which the Courtyard measures itself is 72.5% year-to-date, compared to 67% last year at this time. Granted, August occupancy rates were unusually high due to the flood, Blackwell concedes. Still, he says the numbers are trending in the right direction.
“We are seeing more traction downtown from corporate business and more of a desire from corporations to want to come down here,” he says. “It’s competitive. We have to go out and secure that business but we are seeing more of it.”
—Stephanie Riegel
