A groundbreaking ceremony today is marking the construction start of the new $335 million Marriott Marquis hotel on Walker St. and Crawford next to the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, which will face the existing Hilton Americas hotel across Discovery Green. The newly updated rendering shown below confirms that the hotel will be the first institution anywhere to sport an island shaped like Texas in one of its lower rooftop pools:

***

The 29-story glass tower on the east end of building perched next to the “lazy river” will hold 1,000 guest rooms; downstairs there’ll be 100,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, linked to the convention center by a new skybridge across Avenida de las Americas. There will be room for several restaurants on the building’s ground floor; the sign on the building that reads “Draft Pick” in the rendering above is a stand-in for a yet-to-be-named 11,000-sq.-ft. sports bar facing Discovery Green.

The hotel is a project of Rida Development (which teamed up with Morris Architects for the job) and Houston First, the quasi-governmental agency which also operates the convention center and owns the Hilton Americas. The Marriott Marquis is expected to open in 2016. Houston First is also planning to start construction later this year on a 1,900-car parking garage for guests just north of the convention center and catty-corner from the hotel.

Renderings: Morris Architects

On Discovery Green