City Center hotels are finally opening. Here’s what the first guests will see.
“Welcome to the City Center Marriott.” With those words and a big smile, developer Dudley Webb opened a sneak peek at the new hotel complex at City Center in downtown Lexington.
It’s a day that has been more than a decade in the making. The 218-room City Center Marriott Hotel and the 119-room Residence Inn will open for guests the weekend before Christmas.
“The good news is we received our occupancy permit yesterday, 100 percent rating from the health department, so we’re good to go,” Webb said on Tuesday.
Except for a few rooms, some missing furniture and an outdoor seating area, the hotels are completed.
While the restaurants and bars will not be open to the public until after the official ribbon-cutting on Jan. 8, the hotel ballroom will host its first event, the Blue Grass Charity Ball, on Saturday night, and host a holiday party for one of the company’s that built the property the next day.
Talk about diving into the deep end. But hotel general manager Barry Kuhnke said the staff is ready.
“We’re excited,” he said. After months of work putting the hotels together, they can’t wait to welcome guests.
“It will open at the same time for the first event,” Kuhnke said.
Here’s what they will see:
▪ The Greatroom at City Center, just off the main entrance lobby with floor to ceiling, multistory views of the downtown, has open seating for the bar and restaurant and, eventually outdoor seating. The display kitchen will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.
▪ The M Club, the private lounge for Marriott elite members, with its own restaurant and bar, including a wine dispenser, espresso machine and other amenities.
▪ The ballroom, which is upstairs overlooking the courtyard at the center of the City Center block. The ballroom can hold more than 300 people, depending on the configuration of the room.
▪ The Infinity: Skybar and Cafe, a restaurant and bar with seating for about 150 stretches the length of the Residence Inn rooftop along Main Street. The cafe will be open for lunch and dinner, until midnight.
Infinity features glass walls and roof that can be retracted to make it an open-air cafe in warm weather.
They frame some of the best views in downtown Lexington, from the Courthouse Plaza to Cheapside and the Old Courthouse.
There also is a glassed-in walkway above the courtyard side so hotel guests can walk to and from the rooftop pool without going through the cafe.
▪ The rooms. The all-suite Residence Inn has views of Main Street, including corner rooms that frame the Courthouse Square. The Marriott rooms range from the Presidential Suite that overlooks the courtyard to rooms along Upper and Vine streets.
▪ The sidewalk. The sidewalk in front of the Residence Inn opened over the weekend, the first time that pedestrians have been able to walk that side of Main Street in more than five years.
The opening of the hotels follows the opening in April of Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, the cornerstone of the City Center development, on the corner of Vine and Limestone.
Starbuck’s and the Keeneland Mercantile opened soon after. The office tower at City Center opened May 10, with eight floors of tenants.
Condos atop the City Center office tower are still unoccupied.
In early 2020, ItalX, a new restaurant from chef Jonathan Lundy, sommelier TJ Cox and developer Lee Greer, will open on the corner of Upper and Main.
The $220 million development began in 2008 when the Webbs purchased the city block for a project then known as CentrePointe.
After a lengthy legal battle, and a struggle for financing after the recession hit, construction began on a three-floor underground garage in 2017.
Above-ground construction began in 2018 and Lexington-based Greer Companies announced they would invest more than $70 million into the project.
