Dive Brief:
- Developers in Irving, TX, have broken ground on a $113 million hotel and meeting complex in the city's burgeoning convention and entertainment district, according to The Dallas Morning News.
- The 350-room Westin Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas hotel project will also include an 840-car parking garage and 16,000 square feet of meeting facilities.
- The hotel, under developer Garfield Public/Private LLC and general contractor Austin Commercial LP, is expected to open in 2019. Irving is paying for a portion of the project's construction, but the state has agreed to help with funding by returning $11.5 million of state hotel occupancy taxes and $7 million of state sales and use taxes to the city. A tax increment financing district could also kick in as much as $5 million.
Dive Insight:
The entire convention and entertainment district, which voters approved in 2007, was presented as a way for the city to fill the revenue gap left by the Dallas Cowboys' move to Arlington, TX. The 275,000-square-foot convention center is already paying off for the local economy as it reportedly is already booked an average of 300 days a year.
The 17-acre, $173 million entertainment portion of the development, the Irving Music Factory, is scheduled to open this fall and will feature a 7,000-8,000-seat Live Nation amphitheater and 200,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space. Balfour Beatty completed the first phase in 2015, and then Skanska USA took over in February of last year under a reported $94 million contract.
With built-in entertainment, the convention center is sure to thrive as cities all over the country try to find ways to bring in lucrative convention business. Dan Mehls, vice president and general manager of Mortenson Construction’s Portland, OR, office, told Construction Dive earlier this month that state-of-the-art, amenity-rich hotels are what "make a convention center profitable."
