After 25 years of waiting, design of new downtown Fresno hotel feels underwhelming
Goodness, Fresno. Your standards and expectations for prime downtown real estate sure have slipped.
For nearly a quarter century, city leaders have been trying to fill a vacant 0.74-acre lot next to the L-shaped Fresno Convention Center Exhibit Hall with a hotel.
Those fruitless efforts may now finally result in an actual project — a five-story, 144-room Courtyard by Marriott — scheduled for December 2024 completion, according to a revised timeline approved last week by the Fresno City Council.
That’s the good news, as is the case practically any time a developer makes a sizable investment in downtown Fresno. Unfortunately, the good news comes tempered by aesthetics and history.
When Miguel Arias, the Fresno councilmember for District 3, unveiled a black-and-white rendering of the hotel’s exterior on social media prior to the March 10 meeting, “sad” and “underwhelming” were the most common responses.
To which I would add “dreary,” “uninspired” and, yes, “ugly.” Not sure if the building’s slabby, no-frills design qualifies as brutalist architecture, but it’s certainly brutal on the eyes.
It’s as if someone took inspiration from the Saroyan Theater (located directly across Inyo Street from the hotel site) and the convention center parking garage and had a violà moment: Let’s make downtown Fresno’s newest hotel resemble a combination of two of its least remarkable buildings.
After wading through all the history in The Bee’s archives, the sense of letdown was even more profound.
In 1998, during the Fresno Convention Center expansion, a 10-story, 400-room Sheraton with three restaurants and a full-sized health club were proposed for the privately owned lot at the northeast corner of Inyo and M streets. Designed with elegant lines, distinctive tower crowns and gleaming windows, the building would’ve been a real showpiece for downtown.
That deal eventually fell through. But in 2001, another out-of-town developer (with the backing of then-Mayor Alan Autry) proposed a 12-story, 350-room Wyndham with a second-floor level that connected to other parts of the convention center. While not as striking as the Sheraton, the design was classy and modern.
Had either hotel been built, it would’ve been the largest in downtown Fresno as well downtown’s signature hotel property — with apologies to the 321-room Doubletree by Hilton a couple blocks away.
In 2005, the city of Fresno ponied up $3.1 million for the still-vacant parcel hoping another hotel proposal would soon materialize. It didn’t. A dozen years later, city officials offloaded the property for $645,000 to a local developer.
Buy for $3.1 million, sell for $645,000. Let serve as a warning to anyone who accepts real estate advice from a politician.
Hotel’s slimmed-down design
The December 2017 sale to Metro Hospitality Services Inc. came with a development agreement to construct a four-story, 200-room hotel on the site as either a Hilton or Marriott project. Construction was supposed to have been completed by November 2020, but the deal included a list of contingencies.
One of those, reportedly, was a pandemic. Which prompted the revised construction timeline as well as a slimmed-down design that includes one additional floor but 56 fewer rooms. Amenities include a pool, fitness center, meeting rooms, business library, bistro and lounge, according to a development agreement filed with the city. During mild weather, guests will get to enjoy a first-floor landscaped terrace.
I’ve stayed at several Courtyard by Marriotts. They are perfectly fine properties, just not the type of full-service hotel that downtown Fresno lacks and many business travelers demand. Can’t California’s fifth-largest city lure a more premium brand? I know we’re never getting a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons, but is an actual Marriott too much to ask for? (Visalia has one attached to its convention center, for goodness sake.)
Evidently so, or else that prime piece of downtown real estate that fits snugly next to the convention center wouldn’t have sat vacant for more than two decades.
While any new hotel in downtown Fresno is a welcome addition, after all this time it’s hard not to feel a little let down. Yet again.
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 10:13 AM.
