A Tale of Two City Hotels

Marriott Merges Lodging, Extended Stay in Downtown Austin

By Rob Patterson

"It's a lot of building on a small site," said Ron Turner, senior project manager for Harvey-Cleary Builders of Austin. The 45,000-sq.-ft. site that takes up half a block. The $50 million project, which began in November 2004 is scheduled for completion this month with an opening in late August.

A New Urban Brand The cast-in-place concrete structure transforms what is traditionally a suburban sticks-and-bricks product into an urban hotel concept with elements of New Urbanism in its exterior design, such as a ground-floor restaurant with a sidewalk cafe and traditional elements of the Austin downtown vernacular in its skin.

With a total of 449 rooms - 270 of them in the Courtyard section in the western half of the building and 179 in the Residence Inn in the eastern half - it has more rooms than the typical suburban hotels for both brands. The site is bordered by East Fourth Street, San Jacinto Boulevard and Trinity Street.

"It's one of the first combinations of this sort to be built in an urban location," said Micky Sheppard, project architect for Morris Architects of Houston. "The suites are a different module from the Courtyard module, so it was a little bit difficult on the structural side to get it to work. The room structures are totally different." Sheppard worked closely with Marriott to revise their standard Residence Inn room plans in order to make the suites fit the overall plan.

"It's a new generation of design for Marriott, which is more urban," said Trent Barber, project manager for White Lodging Services, the owner and operator of the hotels. "The Residence Inn rooms look more like an urban loft than a hotel room." The majority are open-plan single rooms with full-size refrigerators in the kitchenettes.

The two hotels have separate entrances and lobbies off of a shared motor court in the center of the structure. They also share a 141-car, below-grade parking garage.

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Digging Downtown Among the daunting aspects of the project was a six-month excavation. Crews went down 40 ft. for the three-level garage, during which 50,000 cu. yds. of material was removed for the 87,000 sq. ft. of underground parking. At 20 ft. below grade, the contractor hit limestone that had to be ripped and rammed to break it up for removal.

"One of the biggest challenges was getting out of the mud in the bottom of the site," Turner said. "It was a continual battle to pump water out during the excavation."

The pumped-out water was held in a series of two tanks in which the dirt and silt settled out before the water was pumped into the city's storm-drain system.

To deal with the ongoing seepage, a 12-ft.-deep sump pit was installed at the bottom of the garage. The exterior walls of the garage feature a waterproof liner and a drainage mat that directs moisture into the pit to be pumped out.

Once construction began on the 284,000 sq. ft. of structure above ground, concrete pours were scheduled from 2 a.m. until noon to avoid afternoon traffic. "We had to coordinate all our deliveries and bring them in at the right time," Turner said of the center-city site. A total of 11,000 cu. yds. of concrete was poured on the project.

Bringing it on Home After the building topped out in January, it was difficult to find enough workers. "As the Austin construction market has picked up, the labor pool has thinned out," Barber said. "It was difficult to keep the number of qualified people on the project to make sure we could meet our scheduled opening date."

Barber said labor is not just a problem in Austin. "People are going down to the Gulf Coast to work on hurricane-related reconstruction," he added.

The exterior features two varieties of limestone for each half on the first two levels and stucco in different tints above. The materials are intended to help differentiate the two styles of hotel. On the upper level, EIFS banding around the building and an aluminum "eyebrow" on the front help visually unite the two sections.

"We were asked to respond to the Austin location and to give it the local vernacular," Sheppard said. "The use of local stone was an easy way to identify it with Austin architecture."

The two hotels are separated by interior doors between the different lobbies as well as the guest floors. They share amenities on the second floor such as an indoor pool, exercise spa and approximately 10,000 sq. ft. of meeting space.

The ground level of the Courtyard side will feature a Champions sports bar at the corner of Fourth and Trinity Streets as well as a Starbucks franchise on Fourth at the motor court, both of which will blend the hotel into the city's pedestrian-friendly Austin "Great Streets" program.

The unified design allows both hotels to share office and service space on the first two levels and operate off the same mechanical system. Tying in with the city's chilled-water system helped save space by eliminating the need for air-conditioning chillers.

The concrete shell helped speed the interior finish-out and save on materials in the guest rooms. "From third floor up, the ceiling is the concrete frame above," Barber said. "If you walk in and look at the painted concrete, it has the look and feel of a drywall ceiling. That was a time saver."

The concrete frame provides sufficient soundproofing against urban noise. That potential problem was also addressed by the choice of windows.

"We had a sound engineer do a study of downtown in regards to nightlife, traffic and Interstate 35 nearby and felt like our acoustic assembly of the concrete wall and stucco was sufficient," Barber said. "We thought that where we maybe had a future problem was the windows, so we upgraded the glass to a higher STC [sound transmission coefficient] rating."