Indianapolis’ Huge Hotel Expansion. City and Developer Go with Four Facilities Instead of One Large Building.

Fast-track hotel project in Indianapolis will offer some rooms for next spring’s national collegiate basketball finals and will be fully ready to go for the 2012 Super Bowl.

By Steve Kaelble

The city of Indianapolis had good news and bad news for hotel-developing partners White Lodging and REI Investments. Yes, the city announced just before Christmas 2006, you win the deal to build a massive hotel in downtown Indianapolis. But, the city added, we want you to take your design back to the drawing board, make it bigger and jazz it up a bit.

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Today, the project known as Marriott Place is about halfway to completion. It’s a $450-million hotel complex that features not just one but four hotels: a glass-enclosed JW Marriott skyscraper, plus three smaller Marriott-branded hotels on the same site—a Courtyard Marriott, a Fairfield Inn & Suites and a SpringHill Suites.

At 1,005 rooms and 34 stories, the JW Marriott will be Indiana’s biggest and tallest hotel. The overall Marriott Place project will add a total of 1,626 guest rooms and a giant ballroom to the downtown Indianapolis convention scene, plus a T.G.I. Friday’s and two other restaurants, a parking garage and a walkway linking the seven-acre complex to the currently expanding Indiana Convention Center located diagonally across the street.

The project is larger and more striking in appearance than what the developers originally proposed. That design included about 800 rooms and revolved around a rather rectangular, 25-story anchor hotel that many observers felt paled architecturally when compared to the 44-story, red granite and glass InterContinental hotel that was the other finalist.

The Marriott Place development near the convention center in Indianapolis will feature four connected hotels. The largest of them will stand 34 stories tall and be the tallest hotel in Indiana. (Rendering courtesy of Hunt Construction Group)

Like the JW Marriott, the InterContinental would have been the state’s tallest hotel, but the sleek skyscraper also would have ranked as Indiana’s second-tallest building overall—a real skyline changer for Indianapolis. Among the apparent reasons it lost in the bidding was the concern that it might not be completed in time for the 2010 NCAA Men’s Final Four college basketball championship in Indianapolis. Though the JW Marriott itself will miss the big dance by nearly a year, the other three hotels are to be finished just in time for Final Four revelry.

When the team developing the Marriott complex returned from the drawing board a few months after landing the deal, they showed off a larger and more distinctive design, with a gently curved façade adorned in cobalt blue glass panels. “We decided there was a market need for a 1,000-room hotel,” says Jeremy Stephenson, vice president, development, for REI. As for the new appearance, the enlargement of the project gave White Lodging’s owner a chance to make more of a statement, he says. “Dean White wanted something more architecturally significant.”

Two towercranes handle forms, material, and the 7,300 glass panels needed for the ever-rising J.W. Marriott hotel, which will top out at 34 stories and highlight the four-hotel complex. (Photo courtesy of Tom Hale)

Construction manager Hunt Construction Group began extensive site preparation well before construction drawings were finished, starting with the shuttering of an existing Courtyard by Marriott and T.G.I. Friday’s on the site (the original hotel is being renovated by F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. into the Fairfield Inn).

The foundation for the JW Marriott was poured in the fall of 2008, and the building quickly began rising above ground level. By March 2009, the tower was approaching its halfway point and installation of the glass curtainwall began on the lower floors even as the upper floors were still being erected. Temporary roofs are allowing full enclosure of the lower floors and enabling interior work to proceed, while the upper structure rises ever higher. The building will require some 7,300 glass panels, each weighing about 800 pounds and measuring 4 by 10 feet, according to Hunt.

Workers hope to finish the top floor by about the end of the year and have most of the building fully enclosed by winter. The timetable is even quicker on the smaller hotels. The building housing the Courtyard and SpringHill hotels was topped out as summer began, with Shiel Sexton Co. Inc. in charge of that portion of the project. Along with the Fairfield, the smaller hotels are to open in March 2010, just in time for the Final Four. The JW Marriott has a grand opening scheduled in February 2011, with plenty of time to spare before the 2012 Super Bowl comes to town.

It’s been a smooth project, according to Stephenson, with few noteworthy challenges. “We had a great availability of local labor, which really drives the work getting done, and we have a local general contractor and local subcontractors that have worked together,” he says.

Workmen carefully place blue 4-ft by 10-ft, 800-pound glass panels for the J.W. Marriott hotel’s curtainwall. (Photo courtesy of Tom Hale)

Indianapolis has for some time sought to add a 1,000-room hotel to the downtown inventory, as it continues to build its reputation as a convention destination. The Marriott Place project is seen as a convention headquarters hotel, with 104,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space of its own along with 40,500 square feet of ballroom. Its skywalk will link it to the Indiana Convention Center, which itself is currently undergoing a $275 million expansion that will bring the facility to about 1.1 million square feet, including convention space in the new Lucas Oil Stadium. The convention center expansion, now nearly half complete, is going up on the site of the former RCA Dome, which was demolished after Lucas Oil Stadium opened.

The convention center project will move Indianapolis up the list of U.S. convention destinations—from 33rd to 16th, based on total square footage in one place. Adding the Marriott Place to the mix gives Indianapolis another distinction as the city with the most hotel rooms connected by skywalk to its convention center, surpassing Minneapolis.