Hotel Harbinger From Austin
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 1/1/09 @ 11:18 am - Filed Under Local Politics
White Lodging, the developer for the proposed Harrison Square hotel, is backing out of their committment in Austin, Texas. The Austin project sounds similar to our Harrison Square project albeit on a grander scale:
Austin’s biggest hotel project, a planned 1,000-room Marriott on Congress Avenue, has been postponed, in the most dramatic evidence so far of how the credit crunch is slowing commercial development.
“The national economic crisis has brought the financing of future hotel projects to a screeching halt,” said Randy McCaslin, a vice president with PKF Consulting , which tracks the hotel market. “If a project did not have its financing commitments before the crisis, it is unlikely that it will get financed until the middle of 2009 or later.”
This is the most disturbing part about the lack of information coming from the city and the Redevelopment Commission. What the hell is the status of our project? Everybody knows banks are not financing large projects right now and they definitely aren’t financing hotels.
Construction of the 26-story Marriott originally was to have started this year. Then the timetable was bumped to 2009.
Now the developer, White Lodging Services Corp. , is giving no revised start date.
“This is the most difficult time in recent memory to crystal-ball the upcoming year due to the unparalleled severity of the economic downturn and the fact that the financial community remains in a holding pattern,” said Deno Yiankes , president and chief operating officer of investments and development for White Lodging.
Council Member Mike Martinez said a White Lodging representative told him this week that the project is on hold and that the company had been unable to obtain financing. He said White Lodging might be considering alternatives, including a smaller project.
That bumped timetable sounds about like what’s going on here does it not?
The postponement also is a setback for the city’s aspirations to attract large-scale conventions.
The Marriott would be Austin’s biggest hotel, with 85,000 square feet of meeting space. It would add the global marketing clout of a top-tier hotel chain to efforts to recruit the big conventions that need hundreds of rooms.
“Without more hotel rooms, the convention center will not be able to reach its potential,” McCaslin said.
The Grand Waynce Center faces an identical problem if our hotel doesn’t get built.
Novare Group , the developer of the 360 condominium tower, still plans a 40-story tower with condos plus 150 hotel rooms on the current post office site.
Taylor Andrews, the project’s local partner, said his best guess is that work might start in 2010 or 2011. Earlier this year, Andrews said work on the project would start in the fall of 2009.
Just like our condos will break ground on opening day right?
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Thanks Jeff, the local media is finally picking up on this story.