Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel

The Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel (HCDH) is a skyscraper on the corner of Ontario Street and Lakeside Avenue along The Mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It opened in 2016, has 600 rooms and stands 32 stories in height.[1] It is one of four Hilton properties in downtown Cleveland, the other three being Hilton Garden Inn, the DoubleTree Hotel Cleveland, and Hampton Inn.

Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel (HCDH)
Former names	Convention Center Hotel
General information
Type	Hotel
Location	100 Lakeside Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44114 United States
Construction started	2014
Completed	2016
Cost	$272 Million
Height
Roof	114 m (374 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	32
Design and construction
Architect	Cooper Carry
Other information
Number of rooms	600

The building was constructed under a partnership between the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for the purposes of attracting larger conventions to the city of Cleveland. The agreement was entered into under the first chief executive of Cuyahoga County, Ed FitzGerald's administration and the three-term Cleveland mayor Frank G. Jackson.[2]

The hotel is the tallest and largest in the city. Previously, the largest hotel in the city was the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel which has 500 rooms.[3] This is the first major hotel constructed in the city since the building of the Marriott at Key Center in 1991 at a height of 320 feet with 385 rooms.[4] The new Hilton is managed by Teri Agosta.[5].

Impetus for hotel

Following the completion of the new Global Center for Health Innovation and spurred by a tax over run that was raised by the county to construct that facility, the first chief executive of Cuyahoga County, Ed FitzGerald spearheaded the notion that the county needed to mount a hotel project to meet demand for bigger conventions that would overlook Cleveland simply because it no longer had a large enough hotel to accommodate over 500 guests at a time in one location.

This was due to the fact that back in the 1990s, the Stouffer's company (who owned the hotel at the time) renovated the 1000 room Hotel Cleveland at Public Square (connected to the iconic Terminal Tower) down to just 500 rooms. Not many Clevelanders knew this, but tourist groups and convention planners certainly did. This had become something of a liability to the tourism of Cuyahoga County and Cleveland was no longer even being considered as a viable convention town.[6] It was acknowledged that the Hilton Hotel project was instrumental in landing the 2016 Republican National Convention.[7]

Financing

The Hotel cost $272 million. The city of Cleveland passed legislation that led to the financing structure for the hotel in December 2013.[8] Cuyahoga County followed suit by passing approval for the project in April 2014.[9]

Design

The lead architect on the project was the Atlanta firm of Cooper Carry. The project is LEED certified and has an extensive use of glass to create three slender modern towers jutting up from a four-story concrete pedestal base. It contains a main and junior ballroom. The hotel is an homage to the visionary civic minded Daniel Burnham Cleveland Group Plan that was instituted in 1903, as per this fact the hotel's new bar is called the Burnham.[10] The skyscraper was erected by the New York City firm Turner Construction.[11]

See also

• List of tallest buildings in Cleveland

References

1. "First look: new downtown Hilton offers stunning views of downtown, Lake Erie (photos)". Cleveland.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
2. "Hilton Downtown Cleveland convention hotel is on track for completion in time for Republican National Convention". Cleveland.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
3. Greenberg, Peter S. (29 April 1990). "Hotel Disasters Have Put Key Issue Under Fire". Los Angeles Times (latimes.com). Retrieved 2014-08-29.
4. "Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Center". Emporis.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
5. "CrainsCleveland.com : Subscription Center". Crainscleveland.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
6. "11 actions Ed FitzGerald, Cuyahoga County's first executive, will be remembered for". Cleveland.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
7. https://huffingtonpost.com/andrea-poe/republican-national-conve_2_b_10357560.html
8. "Cleveland City Council passes Convention Center Hotel financing plan, after all". Cleveland.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
10. "Hilton Cleveland Downtown". Cooper Carry. Retrieved 2015-08-15.
11. "Hilton Cleveland Downtown | Turner Construction Company". Turnerconstruction.com. Retrieved 2015-08-15.