A planned 38-story expansion of the Marriott at LA Live is off the table because of competing efforts to put a larger hotel at the neighboring convention center. The Marriott’s new tower would have spanned Olympic Boulevard, included 755 rooms, and connected to the existing Marriott/Ritz-Carlton tower. But hotel owner AEG (which also owns LA Live) is now saying it will not build, because of plans for a competing, 1,000-room hotel at the convention center, the Los Angeles Times reports.
AEG announced plans for its hotel expansion last year. Then, this February brought news the city might overhaul the aging convention center in a public-private partnership that would entail building a 1,000-room hotel along with a whole "mixed-use district."
This new convention center hotel would pose "severe operational and economic consequences" for AEG, the company's vice chairman, Ted Fikre, said in a letter Tuesday. He also accused the city of trying to "usurp" the LA Live hotel’s position as the convention center headquarters hotel. "The development of a second headquarters hotel was not a part of the deal when the city insisted that AEG build a convention headquarters hotel," Fikre wrote.
The city is still figuring out the best way to transform the convention center, but a spokesman for City Councilman Curren Price, who represents that part of downtown, said he was "committed to the idea" of erecting that 1,000 room hotel opposed by AEG.
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