EVERETT — Construction on the delayed Courtyard by Marriott hotel is finally under way.
The eight-story building, which will rise on the southeast corner of Colby Avenue and Wall Street, is a prize long-sought by city leaders looking to attract a hotel to a former municipal parking lot and bring visitors to downtown Everett.
Located three blocks from Xfinity Arena, the hope is that the 156-room hotel would encourage guests in the city to spend the night rather than head out of town toward hotels in Seattle or Tulalip.
As such, it’s seen as a key piece of the city’s strategy for revitalizing downtown Everett.
“It adds to the vibrancy and (puts) feet on the street in the downtown area,” said Lanie McMullin, the city’s executive director for economic development. “It allows us to create critical mass in tourism.”
Already, Wall Street between Colby and Wetmore has been closed for the initial prep work.
The hotel’s developer, Seattle-based Touchstone Corp., intended to begin work in 2011, but it didn’t complete the purchase of the land from the city until January 2013.
“We hoped to start sooner, but the Great Recession impacted financing timing, as it did for many deals around the region,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Most recently, the company’s plans got hung up over changes to a federal immigration program that governs foreign investors in business ventures.
Last fall, Touchstone had to ask the City Council for a one-year deadline extension to October 2014 to complete the financing of the $27 million project.
With its permits finally in hand, construction is expected to take 21 months. There will be no formal ground-breaking, said Everett Communications Director Meghan Pembroke, but a grand opening will be held when the hotel opens.
“A hotel in a secondary or tertiary city is the hardest beast of all to finance,” McMullin said.
“However Touchstone was completely bullish on the idea, they were in the right time and the right place,” she said. “They kept at it.”
McMullin added that Everett gets a high volume of international business visitors because of the aerospace industry, especially given its size.
There are about 400 hotel rooms in the city, spread between the Hampton Inn, the Holiday Inn and the smaller Inn at Port Gardner, that can serve that clientele.
“We need as many upper-end hotels as we can put together,” McMullin said.
The plan for the 160,000-square-foot hotel also includes meeting space, a hotel restaurant, three levels of underground parking and 4,300 square feet of leasable retail space.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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