Officials with the City of Birmingham and Operation New Birmingham joined in the groundbreaking ceremony for a new 129-room Residence Inn by Marriott at the corner of 20th Street and 8th Court South today.
Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford cited the economic growth that has taken place during his short time as the city’s CEO, and promised more announcements were coming soon.
“I’ve been in office for 150 days, and already we have $500 million in new investments coming into this city,” Langford said. “That says a lot about Mike Calvert, ONB, and this city. It shows you what we can do when we come and work together.”
Other officials on hand for the groundbreaking included City Councilors William Bell and Steven Hoyt, UAB representatives, and project designer Danny Bounds of Memphis-based Bounds & Gillespie Architects.
In addition to the new Southside hotel, Langford said, “we’ll have more announcements about other projects in this area in the next few days.” He later hinted that one project involved the long-empty Quinlan Castle property.
Michael Calvert, Executive Director of ONB, said Marriott’s $25 million hotel project is the first extended stay hotel in Birmingham’s City Center. The hotel is expected to open by June 2009.
Developer Charles Clarkson, of Jacksonville, Fla.-based The Clarkson Group, said the project couldn’t have happened without assistance from the Mayor’s Office, Community Development, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and neighboring businesses. He said the city’s political leadership’s entrepreneurial spirit is what will help attract more development because “they recognize that they can make things happen.”
This hotel is one of three currently under development along 20th Street in Downtown Birmingham. A new Hyatt Place Hotel is under construction at the former Tom Williams Cadillac site at 4th Avenue South, and renovation of the former Regions Bank building at the corner of 5th Avenue North will turn it into a luxury Renaissance Hotel.
“All told, we’ll soon have over 550 new hotel rooms under construction on 20th Street alone,” Calvert said.
Birmingham’s hospitality professionals and officials with the Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau have complained for years how the lack of adequate hotel rooms hurt their attempts to bring bigger conventions to the City Center. But these and other hotel developments should help them put more “heads in beds,” and boost the area’s economy with more tourist dollars.
