Marriott International’s first Hispanic-owned hotel broke ground in the District Wednesday.
The hotel will be of the D.C.-based company’s Courtyard brand. It will be located in the NoMa, or north of Massachusetts Avenue, business improvement district, at the intersection of New York and Florida avenues. The 160,000-square-foot building will devote 10,000 square feet to retail on its ground level.
At a news conference Wednesday, Mayor Adrian Fenty said he was excited to have new projects bringing residents to the area, as NoMa was frequently written off as a neighborhood in the past.
The eight-story, 218-room hotel is scheduled to open in 2009. It will feature a green roof to reduce energy consumptionand storm water runoff.
The hotel is majority-owned by Robert Finvarb, of the Finvarb Group. A number of other local business owners have partial ownership of the property, including Craig Welburn of Welburn Hospitality, Dave Wilmot, of Harmon, Wilmot, Brown & Bagwell, LLP and Thomas Hopkins and Dr. Barron Harvey.
The $55 million hotel will bring approximately 40 new jobs to the area, according to Marriott spokeswoman Dasha Ross.
Marriott also announced its financial results for the quarter on Thursday, where its net income increased 26 percent from the same time period last year, to $229 million.The company’s revenue per available room rose 7.5 percent during the quarter as well. Chief Executive Officer J.W. Marriott Jr. said in a July 12 statement that favorable pricing and frequent leisure travel by customers helped contribute to the company’s success during the quarter, as did strong room rates and increased food and beverage profits.
The company’s latest hotel is part of Marriott’s Diversity Ownership Initiative, established in 2005 to diversify the company’s ownership base, with the goal of having 500 hotels owned or managed by minorities or women by 2010.
