Downtown Tucson hotel coming to life

“Everything is on schedule and on budget.”

That was the message developers of Tucson’s new downtown hotel sent their lenders Thursday.

“That was a pretty good feeling,” said Scott Stiteler, who along with partners Rudy Dabdoub and Paul Chellgren is developing the AC Hotel by Marriott on Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

When open next year, it will be the first new hotel built downtown since 1972.

The building permit issued by the city says the 176,000-square-foot hotel being constructed by Lloyd Construction Co. will cost $20 million to build. The total project cost is $32 million.

Last week, City Councilman Steve Kozachik organized a tour of the future eight-story hotel — of which six stories are now up.

The first floor will be the lobby and 5,000 square feet of commercial space right on the Broadway-Fifth corner, Stiteler said.

The next four floors will be parking with 50 spaces per floor. The top three floors will have 130 standard rooms and six suites.

“That was a challenge,” Stiteler said, “building a hotel with four stories of parking right in the middle of it.”

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Developers broke ground on the hotel in December and hope to be open in late summer of 2017.

The sixth floor will feature an indoor swimming pool and bar with a wall of windows and views of the sky. The two floors above that will have balcony views of the pool from the interior rooms. The rooms on the exterior will have city views.

There are about 55 construction workers on site and about 100 more will be added once the building’s shell is complete and plumbers, electricians and other workers are needed, said Bradley J. Lloyd, vice president of Lloyd Construction.

Developers have been working on this project for many years and “at least eight times we thought it wasn’t going to happen,” Stiteler said. He said a change in the way the city and the private sector work together moved the project forward.

“Now we get along,” he said. “That’s why the hotel is happening.”

The City Council unanimously approved a tax incentive package of $6.7 million in tax breaks over eight years and an $8 million loan from the city’s Community Development Loan fund in 2012 for the project. The hotel is expected to generate close to $18 million in revenue for the city, county and other taxing districts over the eight-year period.

The AC Hotels by Marriott is a fast-growing boutique hotel model for the chain. Tucson was one of the first sites it approved when the brand was introduced in the United States.

Its lounges are designed to encourage collaboration and to be used as co-working spaces during the day. Instead of room service, the hotel will feature continental breakfast, snacks and evening tapas.

Room rates are expected to be around $150 a night.