High-end Worcester hotel to add 168 rooms downtown
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A full-service, 168 room hotel is set to open in Worcester's CitySquare in 2017.
A European-style, high-end hotel will be the newest member of the CitySquare ecosystem in downtown Worcester beginning in 2017 when it opens with a restaurant, 168 rooms and meeting space.
The 120,000-square-foot AC Hotel by Marriott will round out the hotel market in Worcester as the city’s only full-service downtown hotel. It will be clearly aimed at business clients, with meeting space integrated into the facility. The announcement detailing the hotel was made at Worcester City Hall Tuesday evening.
Modern business clients are looking for a signature, downtown experience, said Leo H. Xarras, chairman of Colwen Hotels (a group under XSS Hotels of Hooksett, N. H.), who explained that the hotel will be a functioning part of the downtown environment – with a lively restaurant capable of seating 250 that will be open to the public.
“Our goal is to make sure we can accommodate all of the needs here in town … so that (guests) don’t have to go anywhere else,” he said, explaining that a yet-to-be-finalized amount of meeting space will be integral to the hotel.
Worcester has been sitting at under 800 rooms, well below cities of comparable size, and lacked a downtown hotel that combined a restaurant, meeting space and enough hotel rooms to handle major blocks of company clients, Sandy Dunn, general manager of the DCU Center, has said in the past.
For Xarras, it was not enough to simply add more rooms. The luxurious rooms will represent a $30 to $50 premium over the current $150 to $199 high-end Worcester market, and are part of the AC Hotel brand that was launched in Europe in 1998. Four of these hotels will launch in Boston as well, although Worcester will be the most westerly location in Massachusetts for this hotel brand.
The Worcester location, with its unique amenities, will be able to draw customers from a 20- to 25-mile reach, Xarras said. The hotel will feature expanded common-space accommodations, Worcester-County sourced art, a fitness center, meeting and function space, and a salt-water pool.
“We are adding hotel rooms and a whole new segment of hotel rooms,” he said. “We don’t want to go to markets that already have rooms and offer more of the same.”
The open glass structure and its amenities will be an active part of downtown, said City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. The fact that these hotels are being placed in cutting-edge cities such as New Orleans, New York City and Boston is a sign of how far Worcester has come, he said.
“It fits with the feel we are creating here,” Augustus said, explaining that it will further Worcester’s walkable city experience and help connect downtown to Shrewsbury Street.
The Worcester hotel will cost $33.1 million to develop and will be located at the corner of Front and Trumble streets. It will support 60 full-time jobs upon completion.
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