Now rising in the Big Apple, the 70-story Central Park Marriott will be the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere when completed by CNY Group. The $200 million project, with structural engineering by WSP, reflects the generally upbeat mood in the hospitality market.
“Globally, hotel operating fundamentals are poised to remain strong in 2013,” says Mark Wynne-Smith, Global CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Hotels and Hospitality Group. Despite some economic stressors, JLL believes supply and demand, availability of investment capital (especially from private equity funds), and REIT stock prices all point to “an attractive environment” for hotel business worldwide.
TOP HOTEL ARCHITECTURE FIRMS
2012 Hospitality Revenue ($)1 Gensler $69,090,0002 WATG / Wimberly Interiors $54,713,0003 HKS $32,000,0004 Leo A Daly $19,999,6215 RTKL Associates $19,730,0006 Hnedak Bobo Group $17,425,0007 Perkins Eastman $11,600,0008 Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates $11,251,8009 Cuningham Group Architecture $10,019,86510 HOK $10,011,000
TOP HOTEL ENGINEERING FIRMS
2012 Hospitality Revenue ($)1 AECOM Technology Corp. $100,190,0002 Parsons Brinckerhoff $28,900,0003 Buro Happold Consulting Engineers $16,165,0004 Rolf Jensen & Associates $7,600,0005 Thornton Tomasetti $7,218,7316 KPFF Consulting Engineers $6,000,0007 Arup $5,527,3718 Michael Baker Jr. $4,340,0009 Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates $2,880,00010 WSP USA $2,696,642
TOP HOTEL CONSTRUCTION FIRMS
2012 Hospitality Revenue ($)1 Manhattan Construction $290,769,0002 Structure Tone $250,908,0003 Lend Lease $234,975,0004 Swinerton Builders $227,431,9505 Mortenson Construction $209,550,0006 Tutor Perini Corporation $209,216,1267 Brasfield & Gorrie $163,774,5588 Flintco $155,600,0009 Messer Construction $147,695,12810 Yates Cos., The $144,700,000
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York City, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C., are pinpointed as strong markets in the Americas (http://bit.ly/JLLHotels).
Adaptive reuse for hospitality is producing some particularly interesting remakes of historic properties. The strategy dovetails with travelers’ growing taste for local authenticity—a particular interest of Millennials, according to Tom Ito, Principal and leader for Gensler’s global hospitality practice. “For this generation, avoiding the norm is all about being true to yourself,” says Ito. “As this consumer group grows in spending power, hoteliers will need to provide personalized experiences that reflect the spirit of this demographic.”
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| Oct 13, 2010
County building aims for the sun, shade
The 187,032-sf East County Hall of Justice in Dublin, Calif., will be oriented to take advantage of daylighting, with exterior sunshades preventing unwanted heat gain and glare. The building is targeting LEED Silver. Strong horizontal massing helps both buildings better match their low-rise and residential neighbors.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
The Watch Factory, Waltham, Mass.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards — Gold Award. When the Boston Watch Company opened its factory in 1854 on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Mass., the area was far enough away from the dust, dirt, and grime of Boston to safely assemble delicate watch parts.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Cleveland, Ohio
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. The Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was dedicated on the Fourth of July, 1894, to honor the memory of the more than 9,000 Cuyahoga County veterans of the Civil War.
