Work has begun on the last major piece of downtown Cincinnati's reimagined convention district.
Officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday — inside the renovated First Financial Convention Center next door due to rain — to mark the start of construction on the 700-room, 21-story Marriott Hotel going up at Fifth and Plum Streets. The facility will have roughly 60,000 square feet of meeting space and will be connected to the neighboring convention center with a skybridge.
The $540 million project spearheaded by 3CDC and developer Portman Holdings is financed through both private investment, state grants and other public funding. Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval says it will strengthen the region's pull for visitors.
"This is the first addition to our skyline in years," he said. "It is the trademark headquarters hotel that will catalyze all the investment that we're pouring into the convention district to sell Cincinnati to companies, conferences, concerts and traveling families as the place to come visit."
City and county leaders, members of Southwest Ohio's statehouse delegation, developers and representatives from the hotel industry gave remarks.
Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus said development of the new hotel was a long time coming and took multiple complicated steps, including the acquisition and demolition of the aging Millennium Hotel nearby.
"This started about seven or eight years ago, when Todd Portune was still a county commissioner, and we conducted a study with the business community to better understand why we weren't attracting conventions to Cincinnati," she said. "And the answer to that question... in part was that 'you don't have a decent headquarters hotel,' among other things. We had a pretty tired convention center at the time, as well."
The hotel is part of a broader $828 million plan to revamp the district. Other parts of that plan — extensive renovations of the convention center and the construction of a neighboring public plaza — are largely complete. Those projects were paid for with tens of millions in state funds as well as proceeds from a 1% increase in the county's hotel tax.
State Rep. Dani Isaacson said the completed district isn't just about boosting tourism to the region. He says public investment is aimed at boosting the city and county tax base and creating public good.
"We use taxpayer dollars to invest in economic growth in these projects so it can benefit real peoples' lives," he said. "We don't just want people coming to the hotel from out of town and having the best time. We want this hotel to be a catalyst for kids in Over-the-Rhine to learn to read better in 4th grade. We want this economic growth to be a catalyst for life expectancies to get longer in Cincinnati, for us to have new parks and new schools and new opportunities for people in this community."
Construction of the hotel should take about 28 months, 3CDC Executive Vice President for Development Katie Westbrook said at the groundbreaking.
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