Dive Brief:
- Tuner Construction broke ground Tuesday on the $250 million, 360-room Conrad Washington, DC, luxury hotel in the CityCenterDC mixed-use development.
- The Conrad will feature 30,000 square feet of upscale retail space, reportedly including a Tiffany & Co. store, as well as a restaurant headed up by celebrity chef Bryan Voltaggio, according to the Washington Business Journal.
- Developers said the hotel will generate more than 450 full-time jobs during construction, 350 permanent post-construction positions and 200 indirect jobs in the surrounding community.
Dive Insight
In addition to job creation, hotel developers said at least 51% of workers for the construction phase will be DC residents, and 35% of construction and development, worth approximately $60 million, will be performed using District of Columbia Certified Business Entities contractors. CBE-related equity partners also own 20% of the project's developer equity.
The hotel, named for Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, is part of the first phase of CityCenterDC, which includes 191,000 square feet of retail, 674 residential units (458 for rent; 216 for sale) and 522,000 square feet of offices. The team of international real estate developer Hines, along with Qatar-backed Qatari Diar and Hilton Hotel brand Conrad Hotels & Resorts, is the primary developer on the project. The designers and architects include HKS Architects, Herzog & de Meuron and Rottet Studio.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against a Department of Labor decision that developers and builders for the CityCenterDC project must pay prevailing wage, or Davis-Bacon, rates. The District is leasing the land to developers for the privately funded development, but the court ruled that, in this case, that relationship wasn't enough to justify the higher pay scale.
