Raleigh Marriott City Center Hotel

[ChiefJoJo]

I must say having walked around the Marriott, I am disappointed how it turned out at the street level. OK, so the Lenoir Street frontage was always going to be the forgotten side with the U/G parking entrance, but Salisbury is awful. I know the underground tunnel is supposed to carry conventioneers back and forth, but while the plaza of the RCC is fairly inviting for pedestrians (for a massive building), the Salisbury side of the hotel--apparently where the meeting rooms are located--seems to have been designed for zero activity... no retail, nothing. I'm not sure if there are even any doors there. Anyway, for a building that taxpayers shelled out $20M for, I am disappointed, and I don't even mean the EIFS.

[NCSpazz]

I thought the same thing when I drove up Salisbury to have a look the other week. The shorter portion of the building near the street reminds me of a High School gymnasium. I was extremely disappointed.

[DPK]

Well, if the convention center ever has to expand, those meeting rooms could be demo'd and opened up to the street for retail.

Sad though I agree.

[JeffC]

I ate lunch at the restaurant last week. Very elegant--service was a bit spotty, as you might expect with a place that just opened. They transgressed one of my pet peeves which is, if you are too snooty to write down what I order, you better make darn sure you remember it...All the wait staff appears to have been imported from elsewhere. This place is the sister establishment of another restaurant in Atlanta which I think is in Buckhead (Paces Ferry Road address...)

[Jones_]

^ I think the not writing down thing is dictated by restaurant management....high end places don't want someone flipping order tickets over in peoples faces

[ncwebguy]

I haven't been on the Salisbury side yet, but the early blueprints looked like that side got shafted.

It seems as if the plans were pulled off a shelf somewhere and the Salisbury side is supposed to be *attached* to the convention center. But since it isn't, they threw in meeting rooms instead. I don't know what elevation is, but I did see the CC "tunnel" off the hotel lobby.

I hope the space was left empty in the hopes of drawing retail complementing the CC once the market has been established (high rents for the close proximity to the CC's plaza), but could also see that not happening if there is a lot of focus on F Street and City Square/Plaza.

Expanding the CC *above* Salisbury would leave the field to the west as open space longer, though it would also make Salisbury feel like a sealed off corridor.

[Jones_]

My basis for comparison may not measure up to other highly traveled folks here on UP but I thought the Marriott did a good job addressing the Fayettevile Street frontage walking by tonight....much better than hotels I have stayed in Orlando, Denver, Charlotte, Atlanta, San Antonio and even D.C. I also like the modern twist on the furniture in the lobby instead of the stuffy tired Westin look of dark wood and prim and proper-ism throughout. The restaurant had about 40 people in it and the Wake County economic development folks were already having a conference in it.

Also worth noting, is that FS feels great to be extended farther south even if its only half of one segment. Raleigh really has something cool with the book-ends of the Capital and Memorial Auditorium.

[North_Raleigh_Guy]

Some Pictures of the Convention Center and Hotel (Taken August 6th)

Convention Center

Shimmer Wall

Marriot Hotel

Seating out Front

View of RBC Plaza from Marriot

View in the Hotel Lobby

[JeffC]

I think ya'll are being a little harsh on the hotel/convention center transition...there is a large staircase down from the hotel meeting room level to a large concourse that is airy and naturally lit leading under Salisbury St. into the convention center...that area at the bottom of that large staircase also has an elevator lobby and entrances into the underground parking garages. I don't think the design intent was for people to have to go outside and cross Salisbury Street as the primary route between hotel and Convention Center, so the streetscape of the hotel on that side isn't as important...

[ncwebguy]

A vibrant city has vibrants streets. Period.

I respect the need for the corridor connecting the hotel and parking deck to the convention center, but I don't think it should be treated as the *primary* connection, which is what has happened.

Rockafeller Square in NYC works because of the large volumes of people already walking around at street level in the area, and the longer, colder winters there. The well-appointed tunnel feels a lot like the overstreet mall in Charlotte, which treated office workers in the central business district as hamsters in a habitral while the streets themselves were abandoned by everyone but the homeless. The queen city still lacks a downtown befitting its size and stature as a banking mecca due to having blocks of "unimportant streetscapes".

The F Street side is nice, and I hope Charter Square mirrors it (or better) on the east side. With Lenior, McDowell, and Salisbury being unimportant around the convention center (parking decks to the north and south, blank face on the Marriott), the experience of going to the convention center will be somewhat lessened.

[NCMike1981]

^Thanks for those pics! Even though I'm not thrilled with the outside appearance of the hotel I love that lobby!

[JeffC]

A vibrant city has vibrants streets. Period.

I respect the need for the corridor connecting the hotel and parking deck to the convention center, but I don't think it should be treated as the *primary* connection, which is what has happened.

Rockafeller Square in NYC works because of the large volumes of people already walking around at street level in the area, and the longer, colder winters there. The well-appointed tunnel feels a lot like the overstreet mall in Charlotte, which treated office workers in the central business district as hamsters in a habitral while the streets themselves were abandoned by everyone but the homeless. The queen city still lacks a downtown befitting its size and stature as a banking mecca due to having blocks of "unimportant streetscapes".

The F Street side is nice, and I hope Charter Square mirrors it (or better) on the east side. With Lenior, McDowell, and Salisbury being unimportant around the convention center (parking decks to the north and south, blank face on the Marriott), the experience of going to the convention center will be somewhat lessened.

[Spatula]

I think in making a comparison to Rockefeller Center in NY you are committing the very same error of which you accuse the convention center design....ignoring the environment it sits in. New York City doesn't have months of broiling heat and humidity from May to late August as we do here (they call a few days of 90+ degrees a heatwave...we call it June)

Expecting a bunch of folks in business attire to want to go outside in the summer months just for the sake of encouraging the "streetscape" strikes me as a bit unrealistic. And I've seen the space...it in no way compares to Charlotte's awful hamster Habitrails.

[ERJ170]

Just my two cents, for what its worth, but I agree that both the tunnel and the outside must be condusive to foot traffic.. They are marketing downtown as a destination.. so it must be pedestrian friendly and foot traffic worthy.. who wants to walk downtown if you can't look and go into shops.. see artstores.. visit designer boutiques and good restaurants and nice pubs and snazzy stores.. The hotel looks good from the pictures, but they do seem to have missed the target if there is not appropriate streetscene on the majority of the sides of the building..

What makes San Diego, Seattle, Miami, etc so much of a destination is not only the ammenities but the possibilities of things to do in all parts of the city.. And to me, the best part of NYC is that their underground tunnels branch out to many different exits with shops along the tunnels and street (especially near Union Square)..

But again, that's just my opinion..

[Gard]

True but for most of the summer, it's not too hot to go outside. This is not Texas. We get a couple weeks of really miserable heat, but the rest of summer is generally okay. And the rest of the year has great weather. Try going outside in NYC in the winter. It's definitely more tolerable here in those months.

[ncwebguy]

After walking to the Arts on the Edge last weekend, I walked the Lenoir and Salisbury Street sides of the Marriott. Other than the paintings on the Lenoir side, the hotel's cookie cutter design reduces the pedestrian experience and connection to the rest of the city on three of its four sides. The parking deck entrance and service dock takes away any chance of making Lenior nice. The parking deck entrance could be easily missed if visitors are not paying attention. To the south, sites 2 and 3 might help, but they may turn Lenoir into an afterthought side as well, focusing on F, South, and maybe Salisbury.

I hope I'm wrong, but the Salisbury/Cabarrus corner seems to get worse every time I go through there. The NW is the older parking decks that support BB&T/Two Hannover and the Sheraton. They might be retrofittable to include storefronts of some sort, but I doubt it. The NE corner has the underground parking deck entrance, and Sam and Wally's a little further to the north on Salisbury. The Cabarrus side is a dead wall that will never have anything, except across from the Marriott's drop off when City Plaza is open.

The SE corner has the Marriot's confernce rooms, but they can't be seen into from street level. There is a disconnect between the pedestrians and what is going on inside. They might be able to reopen that space, but it would ruin the atrium created by the escalators decending to the tunnel, so it will probably will never see any activity. The SW corner has a series of steps toward the CC. There is a Cabarrus Street entrance mid block, but it feels like an afterthought/fire exit.

The Convention Center Plaza (not to be confused with City Plaza or the Lichtin Plaza in front of Raleigh Memorial Auditorium), with nothing else around, will go underutilized, like the plaza in downtown Durham discussed in this thread.

Rockafeller Plaza has few entrances from the outside at street level, but passers by can see into several shops including the NBC store, a coffee shop, and other retail. Raleigh has more "hot" days, but NYC has more "inclement" days.

[Jones_]

^ I sort of quietly agreed with the very small minority of people who tried to say that big anything is not the way to make a livable downtown, especially one as physically small as ours. Its so very hard to to make these big structures give you what the 2 dozen small structures that used to be on the block gave you, and it really comes down to what you want of your downtown and whose dollars you want supporting it....locals? visitors? both seems to be what we have had to do and are doing. I can't help but notice that in places like Charleston and Alexandria, the hotels are on the edge of downtown. In ours, the residents were forced to the fringes of downtown long ago. So now our south end of Downtown is relegated to ground zero for visitors, and the big box, new box development that it takes to accommodate them. To my friends on this board, I'll still tell you over a beer I don't think its that bad given the decision to build, and so as not to start city-trash talk, I'll save my number one comparison city till then as well. No matter how you cut it though a retrofitted Eagle, Yarborough, Park or Carolina Hotel would be way cooler than any Marriott.

;

;

[Subway Scoundrel]

I read here about the Salisbury side and the tunnel and how nice the front is on F-street but I guess some people don't like the entrance openness on the S-Street/CC side? Is that correct?

Having stayed in many hotels around the world I don't think it comes down to promoting street life or opening up stores or driving people to a tunnel from heat/cold.

My guess it has to do with security. The biggest concern a hotel has is manning entrances and keeping the access to "upstairs" to a minimal by certain people while controlling the access points at all times. Their biggest fear is someone will sneak up and run havoc with robbery, rape and pilage........let a lone controlling the bums and Hos. If I am staying at the hotel, I could care less about street access at certain points or street appeal on the back side as long as the front door works. I care about not having people breaking into my room, stealing my notebook or looking to get some force action while I am wrapped up in ducktape.

Again, I have not seen the hotel on the inside but the last two 4star hotels I stayed in..if they had a back door, it was monitored by a security guard during the day and closed by 8:pm and not many people knew about them and all other traffic had to come in through the front door. To get to the buildings right next door, I had to take the elevator down to the underground mall/walkway to get to the office I was working at next door. That was the walkway suggested for security reasons. (and the elevators did not go upstairs to the rooms, had to go over to the Room elevators)

[Gard]

^

Thats a great point and I agree, its likely for security. Now that I think of it, I can't recall a hotel I've stayed at anywhere in the world (in a major city) that has had multiple entrances and I've stayed a more hotels than I can count all over Europe and the Middle East.

[ChiefJoJo]

Security? I'm not buying it. Where's the security that prevented the Starbucks and the restaurant from going in? I'm guessing they just lock the doors like everyone else. I have read the comments above, but still come back to these points.

(1) Despite the U/G corridor being present, if the RCC was designed to have an inviting pedestrian entrace on the Salisbury side (it was clearly designed that way), why isn't the hotel designed in the same way to reflect a similar design?

(2) Why did taxpayers shell out $20M, and not get a better product, in keeping with "Livable Streets" ("new 450 room convention hotel with retail, restaurants and active uses on the ground floor")?

And in case you say, "Chief, it does have those things on the Fayetteville St side," I'll answer that I don't really think the Fayetteville St side is very effective either. There are only 2-3 entrances on the whole 400-ft block, and the whole facade feels very sterile. I think some of that is the materials, and some is the lack of ingress/egress points (should have added at least one more retail space). Any way you slice it, it's a dud, it's on OUR main street, and we are stuck with it for about 50 years, or until the EIFS starts falling off.

To me, this failure in execution raises the bar on the adjacent blocks, Charter Square, sites 2 & 3, and Lafayette. If we don't demand better, the entirety of the "Cultural/Convention District" will be a huge missed opportunity. I generally like what I've seen from Charter, but I still think we can do better. Sites 2 & 3 need to raise the bar to a level that we've not seen in Raleigh. With the city controlling the land, they need to step up and make the case for a signature-type of project and public space, and I'm not talking about a super-tall skyscraper either. An international design competition (similar to AIA HQ?) might do that.

[ncwebguy]

I guess the Marriott's official grand opening was on Wednesday, though the media didn't make much of it, outside this N&O Q&A with developer Noble Group's CEO. It is telling that a lot has changed in four years with downtown, yet there is still a lot of work to be done. It is good to see Mr. Shah recognizes that there will need to be more hotel rooms downtown if the city is to be where it wants to be, and gives kudos for the execution of its plan, even though it is still a work in progress. Though I hope followup devlopers don't expect big handouts for standard offerings.

There is *no* correlation to having multiple entrances to the building and security for the guests in the hotel. Are the folks in the Dawson on Morgan worried about someone getting drunk inside their building at The Borrough and coming upstairs to rob them? No, even though it is open pretty late and they don't have a security guard. Do Hudson residents get raped by customers at the UPS Store, Gandolfo's (soon to be reopen as a Manhattan Cafe), Yancy's, and Soma? I don't think so.

Any retail on the Salisbury Street side would have a service entrance/access via the parking deck, not the hotel itself. Room access can and should be confined to the hotel lobby, but that doesn't mean the rest of the building has to be devoid of any other potential uses. With the topography, they could have confernece rooms above retail, like the Sheraton has above Sam and Wallys and the BB&T Branch.

Posta looks nice, but is an *overwhelming* presence, eating up a lot of the ground floor open to the public. It would have been nice if it was Mint/Fins/Yancy's sized, not room after room of dining space that screams "not yours" to passers by. For the whole "active uses" on the ground floor, we have one restaurant, its bar, a chain coffee shop (only open till 7, even on weekends!!!), and a gift/convenience store the size of a walk in closet. How active of a role did the city play in how its $20 Million investment (PLUS the "land" PLUS underground parking deck built below) was spent? I highly doubt the Urban Design Center would have signed off on the lack of "livible" on three sides of the building, with a glassy but not really livable fourth side on Fayetville.

[Subway Scoundrel]

There is *no* correlation to having multiple entrances to the building and security for the guests in the hotel. Are the folks in the Dawson on Morgan worried about someone getting drunk inside their building at The Borrough and coming upstairs to rob them? No, even though it is open pretty late and they don't have a security guard. Do Hudson residents get raped by customers at the UPS Store, Gandolfo's (soon to be reopen as a Manhattan Cafe), Yancy's, and Soma? I don't think so.

[ncwebguy]

I don't see how condo units are any different than hotel rooms. I haven't wandered into the elevator bank yet, but they could easily be configured to open only with a key -- machines don't take bribes!

The single point of entry for *hotel guests*, the lobby, will be staffed 24x7. Someone has been at the front desk and the drop off area (bell hop) at all hours I've been by (afternoon through 10 pm). The door will never be locked, but access will be locked down.

The meetings were numerous and the EIFS issue was important from a "will the building look good ten years from now" kind of way. And their off the shelf hotel plan with empty back/ Salsibury Street side makes *perfect* sense if the hotel was *adjacent* to the convention center, a la the downtown Durham Marriott and Sheraton Imperial Center. With Salisbury Street between hotel and CC, the city was so happy with itself in regards to the convention center plaza, they totally dropped the ball on the *east* side of Salsibury between Cabarrus and Lenior. Businesses like the Iatria that closed in Progress Energy II would have a built in client base from guests at the Marriott above, and could easily provide in-room massage and other services.

My issue is if the developer said "we need conference rooms to make the hotel work, so no Salsibury Street retail vs. no hotel" or the city just didn't push for it, hoping for cafes, shops, etc. to spring up at the Lafayette on site 4, the streetscape of sites 2 and 3, City Plaza, and potential redevelopment in front of the performing arts complex.

[Gard]

Not directly related to the Marriott, but related to hotels in general....The N&O has a doom & gloom article today on the triangle building hotels in a "bad" economy: http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1214462.html

Seems to me that the hotels are doing fine here. If they weren't, they wouldn't be increasing capacity. <sarcasm on> Thats why DTR is in such dire need to hotel rooms, right? <sarcasm off>

[Jones_]

A friend of mine is coming into town this week for business and tried to get a room downtown for Wed and Thurs nights and said the Marriott is sold out, but found a room at the Clarion.