Hotels, particularly of the Hyatt kind, are taking over The Galleria area.
A second hotel, a Hyatt Place property, now joins the Hyatt Regency that broke ground in December 2013. Officials with Songy HighRoads, an Atlanta-based development firm, and Washington, D.C.-based The Carlyle Group, recently revealed the move.
The new hotel will be built at Galleria Plaza, the 7.6-acre office and retail real estate complex Songy HighRoads and The Carlyle Group acquired earlier this year located directly across Sage Road from The Galleria. By the end of next year, the Galleria Place development between Westheimer and West Alabama will have almost 500 new hotel rooms between the two facilities.
Construction in the area could be at an all-time high, with traffic questions looming.
Hyatt Place will have 157 rooms, while the Hyatt Regency is a 325-room project.
Gensler is the architect for both hotels.
Meanwhile, mall planners are looking ahead to the new state-of-the-art flagship Saks Fifth Avenue slated to open early 2016, as well as a slew of upscale stores and restaurants. Construction in the area could be at an all-time high, with traffic questions looming now and once all projects are completed.
And just down the street, AmREIT is proposing a four-star-brand hotel at the southeast corner of Uptown Park, with the possibility of 243 hotel rooms, 234 residential units and up to 20,000 square feet of retail space.
AmREIT is in "exclusive" negotiations for this estimated $204 million undertaking; construction could begin within the next 18 months.
The $1.2 billion transformation, announced by AmREIT officials in February, will turn Uptown Park into a denser urban development. The existing one-story shops and restaurants will be demolished at a gradual pace and replaced with taller buildings that yield more revenue. The transformation of the 17-acre center is expected to take years.
A rendering of Hyatt Place, left, and Hyatt Regency.
