Boutique Boom
Boutique hotel is the latest addition to downtown Houston building boom
Downtown Houston has long been considered to have a woeful lack of hotel rooms, but that is changing with at least nine hotels planned or under construction. The latest to join in the boom: A 15-story boutique hotel atop the recently announced Greater Houston Partnership Building.
A new conceptual rendering released by WHR Architects shows a sleek glass-and-steel addition with 400 hotel rooms above the 10-story tower designed to house the city's business and tourism champions. Houston First is soliciting proposals for the hotel, as first reported by the Houston Chronicle.
The $76 million tower, located just north of the George R. Brown Convention Center and bounded by Rusk, Capitol, Avenida De Las Americas and U.S. 59, is set to open in December 2015. Tenants include The Greater Houston Partnership, Houston First Corp., the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Center for Houston's Future.
The GHP will occupy the two top floors, which includes a 2,000-square-foot terrace overlooking Discovery Green. A sky bridge will connect a planned parking garage to the convention center. Plans include retail space on the street level of the building and along Avenida de las Americas at the GRB.
The building is near the new $266 million, 1,000-room Mariott Marquis on Avenida de las Americas, which broke ground in April. The hotel, in addition to featuring more than 166,000 square feet of meeting, banquet and exhibition space, will include amenities such as a resort-style deck, an infinity pool and a Texas-shaped lazy river for outdoor activities. It is scheduled to open in the summer of 2016.
Among other new downtown hotels are the JW Marriott at 806 Main St., scheduled to open next month; the Hotel Hotel Alessandra, planned atop the GreenStreet complex for a third quarter 2016 opening: and the Aloft Houston Downtown at 820 Fannin St., set to open in the summer of 2016.
