The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority has broken ground on a new convention center hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio, the city's convention and visitors bureau, Experience Columbus, announced last week.
The $140 million hotel, the Hilton Columbus Downtown, will open in fall 2012 across the street from the Greater Columbus Convention Center, where it will have 532 guest rooms, 48 suites and 22,800 square feet of meeting space, including a 12,000-square-foot ballroom.
"The addition of the 532-room Hilton Columbus Downtown, combined with the existing amenities of the Greater Columbus Convention Center, will enable our city to compete as a convention destination for more than 900 national trade shows, conventions and meetings in our target convention market," said Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority Board Chairman John S. Christie. "We are in a great position to think long-term. Columbus is looking beyond the short-term and preparing for the next 10 years."
Added Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority Executive Director William C. Jennison, "Large regional and national groups require room blocks of 1,000 to 3,500 hotel rooms during peak nights of attendance. The availability of this new hotel will augment the room inventory and lead to additional convention bookings that will also increase utilization of the Greater Columbus Convention Center."
Amenities at the new headquarters hotel will include a 160-seat full-service restaurant, a 100-seat lounge, a specialty coffee outlet and an executive lounge. In addition, the new property will be LEED- and Green Seal-certified.
"With the addition of the Hilton Columbus Downtown to the Destination Columbus sell, we are able to offer multiple downtown-headquarter hotel opportunities to more than one convention or trade show at a time, as well as host larger national conventions and trade shows within the 1.7 million-square-foot Greater Columbus Convention Center," said Experience Columbus President and CEO Paul Astleford. "This new property significantly strengthens the Destination Columbus product offering in the global market."
Several groups already have booked conventions based on the availability of additional rooms at the new hotel. Among them: The Southern Baptist Convention, which will host its 2015 annual meeting in Columbus, drawing 16,000 attendees and $6.2 million in visitor spending to central Ohio.
"The Southern Baptist Convention is excited to be holding its annual meeting in Columbus in 2015 in the beautiful Greater Columbus Convention Center," said Don Magee, associate vice president of finance for the Southern Baptist Convention. "Without the additional rooms provided by the building of the Hilton Columbus Downtown, we would not have been able to consider meeting here."