The Marriott Marquis hotel next to the Washington (D.C.) Convention Center has finally opened.reports Abha Bhattarai in the May 2 Washington Post.
Martin Morse Wooster adds: “You will recall that the DC in 2011 Worldcon bid collapsed in part because one of the hotels they used for the bid was ‘a hole in the ground.’ This was the hotel. It was still a hole in the ground in 2011.”
The hole is filled now with a very big hotel that the Post says cost $520 million.
The hotel — the District’s largest, at 1.1 million square feet — has been more than 20 years in the making. Then-Mayor Marion Barry first proposed the project in 1990. Since then, a number of contentious debates have added to the drama surrounding the hotel’s financing, development and construction. The economy added another hurdle when private financing options dried up in the wake of the recession. The District ultimately provided $206 million in public funding, or 40 percent of the hotel’s final cost, and ground was broken in late 2010.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]