Dive Brief:
- Each unit of the $200 million, 263-room Millennium Hotel slated for Sunnyvale, CA, in approximately two years, will be constructed in Poland, shipped to the site and assembled in place, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. The "construction" of the hotel will take approximately 12 weeks once the parts arrive in California.
- The Silicon Valley Business Journal called the project the "most ambitious modular construction effort yet undertaken in Silicon Valley." Millennium expects to start the project in 2016 and complete it by the end of 2017.
- The project has been 10 years in the making and is currently in the midst of the Sunnyvale approval process. The hotel is significantly different in design from the one Millennium first proposed for the site and is designed around the hotel’s social spaces.
Dive Insight:
The hotel features an ultramodern design, the Business Journal reported, and its layout will be in the style of Millennium’s "M Social" brand, which is geared toward millennials, providing open spaces in which to both work and socialize. Aloysius Lee, group chief executive officer for Millennium Hotels and Resorts, said the hotel group ascribes to the "alone together" concept, much like a Starbucks, where people work in the open but still want to be seen.
Lee told the Business Journal the decision to use modular construction and to build in the Polish factories was about speed and quality control. However, he said, the modular apartment units, which will make up the apartment component of the hotel complex, will be manufactured in Boise, ID.
"We are not only challenging ourselves to build a new, different kind of hotel," he said. "We are also challenging ourselves in using new technology, a new methodology of building."
The hotel will be a full-service property with a 3,000-square-foot restaurant, a 5,300-square-foot banquet hall, 1,700-square-feet of meeting rooms and two bars.
Offsite construction has been gaining popularity recently, as companies look for ways to build structures faster at a higher quality and lower price tag. This major hotel project demonstrates the growing reach of prefab construction methods, which will likely take off in the coming years.
