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The new Downtown Hilton Hotel located adjacent to the Convention Center officially broke ground this afternoon, and construction is expected to be completed in the fall of 2012. The new $140 million full-service hotel will feature 532 rooms, 48 suites and over 22,000 square feet of additional meeting and convention space.
The project is being completed as a partnership between the Franklin County Commissioners, Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, City of Columbus and Nationwide Realty Investors. The Hotel will be operated by Hilton Worldwide.
“The addition of the 532-room Hilton will enable our city to compete as a convention destination for more than 900 national trade shows, conventions and meetings in our target convention market,” said Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority Board Chairman John S. Christie. “Columbus is looking beyond the short-term and preparing for the next ten years.”
The hotel will also include a new 160-seat restaurant, 100-seat lounge, and a coffee shop.
Additional hotel developments for the area have also been proposed, or are already underway, including the Pizzuti Boutique Hotel planned a few blocks north in the Short North, the new Hyatt Place hotel in Grandview Yard, which opens in September, the new six-story Springhill Suites Hotel at the former Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe site, and the boutique Hotel Indigo project near the corner of Broad & High Downtown.
I like the Sky Bridge idea. I love skybridges in general.
Are there plans for a bus stop underneath it? I’ve heard this skybridge/bus stop combination is a real winner!!
@walker-i know there was a lot of talk last time about replacing the skywalk with a tunnel. but i thought about it some more and it seems like it would be the worst of both worlds. The skywalk is relatively thin and extremely glassy, so it wouldn’t be the most obtrusive skywalk and at least pedestrians across it would have a good vantage point of what they could go do. A tunnel would have the negatives of getting people off the streets and also not let them see what they are missing. I guess it all depends on how much the skywalk obstructs views, etc. I think i would rather no skywalk and maybe just a service tunnel, not for guests.
The skywalk essentially says “boundary” or “this is where Downtown begins/ends.” At the very least, they could have made it artistic. Maybe like an arch of some kind?
an arch would be much more appealing. and it would actually fit in with the whole arch theme in the sn….
seriously, is it too late to change that?
It would be cool if they made the skywalk look like a large intestine suspended above the street that crapped out people on either end.
Wait…
cbustransit Says: @walker-i know there was a lot of talk last time about replacing the skywalk with a tunnel.
Yeah, I think that’s all it was though. Just talk. Someone else brought it up, so it’s not my original idea… I just think that it would work well to solve the issue of transporting things back and forth without keeping people off the street.
JonMyers Says: It would be cool if they made the skywalk look like a large intestine suspended above the street that crapped out people on either end. Wait…
The CSCC bridge is about halfway there. Maybe that could be its Halloween costume…
Not too big of a deal, but are those strips of blue and lime green integrated into the architecture? Not really fond of those, but I love this project. That area definitely needs something like this.
I agree, the sky bridge could be a really cool, artistic barrier between downtown and…… maybe we should start calling that area uptown? haha just a thought :P
More uninspiring architecture for downtown Columbus. Very 80′s. It looks like it belongs next to the Student Union at OSU.
I see that the ground breaking was just ceremonial. Any idea when they plan to start construction?
Yea, was at Char-Bar Saturday night and saw the box of dirt was still there. Seriously? The county usually is pretty quick at starting projects. I just want to see some cranes. The sooner that gap on High St. is filled the better.
It’s a great idea that the convention center to add a new hotel right next to it, so when we hold our next huge conventions such as the Arnold Classic, maybe we will topple previous attendance records.
Anybody know what the holdup is on the hotel. I would have thought it would under construction by now.
Please no more “Ibiza” heartbreaks …… that last one put a hurt on me
Might be a little premature to bust out the I-word. ;)
Just looked outside my office window, it appears they’re taking down the lamp posts in the parking lot where the hotel will be. Construction has begun!!
Just received via email:
The new Hotel will be completed — June 2012. Looks like construction will commence September 13th with shell buildout complete by August 2011.
i’m really hoping for that webcam …. i’d love to see this go up.
Shimmy – can you see if they started digging at all?
Hotels on upswing
Sunday, December 12, 2010 03:01 AM
BY MARLA MATZER ROSE
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Two of the nicest new hotel rooms in Downtown Columbus aren’t in a hotel. They’re in a hallway at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, and they serve as model rooms to show prospective groups being courted to stay at the Hilton Columbus Downtown, the publicly financed $140 million hotel being built across High Street from the convention center.
READ MORE: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2010/12/12/hotels-on-upswing.html?sid=101