GRAND SPLENDOR

摘要

For years, St. Louis struggled to attract convention-goers to its 2.7 million sq. ft. downtown America's Center, something even a 1991 building expansion didn't help the city achieve. When the city issued a request for proposals in 1997 to build a large, convention headquarters hotel, New Orleans-based Historic Restoration Incorporated (HRI) proposed jump starting the whole neighborhood surrounding the center by first restoring an adjacent vacant hotel. Six years later, the former 20-story Statler-Gateway Hotel, first built in 1917 by New York architect George B. Post with St. Louis-based Mauran, Russell & Crowell, was renovated and an additional, adjoining tower was built. Operating under the Marriott Renaissance name, the new $265 million Renaissance Grand is now a two-tower hotel with over 900 hotel rooms, four restaurants and lounges, and almost 70,000 sq. ft. of additional function space. "The city had a great convention center on their hands and they didn't have a great convention hotel," says HRI vice president Tom Leon-hard. "Convention-goers look at transportation sources, quality of hotels, and the convention center itself before choosing [where to go]. They had everything but the hotel package that would make them competitive, and now they do."