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BACK DURING the spring, the commercial real estate firm of Adams/Cates issued an analysis of the nation's convention-centered hotel market. Looking at Atlanta, the report said, "the near-term outlook is for an intensely competitive hotel market, particularly in the downtown area." What Adams/Cates analyst Martin Sinderman meant particularly was the then-unfinished shell of the 50-story Marriott Marquis, scheduled to open this July with a festival-style grand opening in late August.
But the Adams/Cates report wasn't intended to spread gloom and doom. Instead, says Mr. Sinderman, over the long term, with the convention infrastructure in Atlanta growing stronger and stronger, the new Marquis should strengthen Atlanta's convention hand rather than weaken it. It all depends, he says, on how well Atlanta can sell itself as a convention city.
That infrastructure Mr. Sinderman speaks of has experienced a rush of reinforcement during the past half decade. First came the new Midfield Terminal, then a series of smaller hotels downtown to augment the huge convention centers like the Omni and the Hyatt Regency; then came the fourth runway at the airport and later the doubling in size of the Georgia World Congress Center. Also experiencing growth is the Atlanta market complexes, those two huge Portman wholesale shopping centers where the South -- and often the nation -- comes to do its "business to business" business. With the opening of the new Marriott and the much smaller Ibis hotels, Atlanta's convention infrastructure will be as complete as ever, the primary reason for Mr. Sinderman's long term optimism, though he expected the opening of the new Marriott to spark intensified competition for today's $560 million Atlanta convention market.
The Marriott Marquis, a joint venture of Washington, D.C.-based Marriott Corp. and Atlanta-based John Portman & Associates, will get a good chunk of that convention dollar simply by virtue of being Atlanta's newest, and biggest, convention hotel. In fact, the Marquis is the biggest hotel south of New York City, at least for the moment. Occupying a full city block on the east side of Peachtree Center, the Marquis sits on a six-story base, billows out for another 30 or so stories, then tapers inward and straightens to tower above all downtown's existing buildings except Georgia-Pacific's corporate tower and John Portman's...