Hotel construction starting at Gateway Center

Construction began this week on the first hotels to be built next to the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park.

The 403-room Marriott Hotel and the 147-room SpringHill Suites, a less expensive Marriott brand, are part of the 28-acre mixed-use development called Gateway Center.

The 1.1 million square foot Gateway Center also will have class-A office buildings totaling 400,000 square feet and 50,000 square feet of retail space, said Kevin Kern, president of Grove Street Partners, the master developer.

The growth of Gateway Center parallels the growth of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport next door, which includes building a massive off-site rental car facility called CONRAC and an automated train similar to the one now at the airport.

Both of those projects are expected to be completed next year. The hotels should be finished in 2010.

The train, called an automated people mover, will connect the airport passenger terminal with the convention center and CONRAC, which stands for consolidated rental agency complex.

Grove Street and its financial partners, Fidelity Investments of Boston and Williams Opportunity Fund, are investing $134 million in the hotels.

“These two new Marriott hotels are perfectly positioned to serve both the convention and business meeting audience as well as the general public traveling through the Atlanta airport,” said Roger Conner, Marriott’s vice president of corporate communications.

The seven-story Marriott will include 20,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space, a Marriott-branded restaurant and a third-party restaurant.

Both buildings will be LEED certified, meaning the U.S. Green Building Council will assure that they meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates designed the Marriott Hotel and Goode Van Slyke Architecture designed the SpringHill Suites Hotel.

The international convention center is the second largest facility of its type in the state. The Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta is the biggest.

Grove Street also is developing the Galleria Parkway mixed-use project in Cobb County, near the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.