Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh this week joined executives from Omni Hotels and Resorts and other officials to break ground on another hotel in the city’s Seaport District. When the $500 million hotel opens in 2020, it will have 1,055 guest rooms and 52 suites at the top of the 21 floors. The hotel will also have 100,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
The hotel near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, is sited on two acres of land owned by Massport. “This groundbreaking not only signifies the strong economic progress happening in the City of Boston, but also the fundamental building blocks of opportunity we are creating for our workforce,” Massport CEO Thomas Glynn said in a statement. “We look forward to further strengthening our partnership with Omni Hotels, as we watch this project evolve into a key destination for visitors from across the state and country.”
It will be the fourth largest hotel in Boston with two 20-story gleaming towers and will also have a luxury spa, elevated pool deck, fitness center and the second largest ballroom in New England. Omni Hotels & Resorts is spending “$500,000 a key” to make it a showplace. Omni’s owner Robert Rowling promised a year ago that, “When we finish with the property you’re going to walk in and say ‘wow.’”
But the look of the hotel is not the only wow factor, because the Omni Hotel Waterfront represents much more than the sum of its ritzy parts. It also marks an innovative approach in creating real participation for Boston’s minority and women investors.
Spurred by legislation co-authored by then Senator Linda Dorcena Forry and then Representative, now Senator Nick Collins, the Massachusetts Port Authority wove a diversity requirement into the Omni deal, which placed value on minority and women-owned firms and equitable partnerships. Specific language that insured minorities and women were in the center of the action, not sideline participants was called a “a game changer,” by Richard Taylor, of the New Boston Hospitality Group, the umbrella organization formed to represent the women and minority investors.
This key element in the deal gives definitive clarity to the perpetual rhetoric of ‘bringing the economic boom of the waterfront to the inner city’. The next challenge, as Senator Collins stated at the groundbreaking, is to for state government and quasi-public agencies like the MA Convention Center to make this de facto policy a key ingredient in all prospective opportunities whether commercial or retail. The success of the Omni deal goes a long way to attaining the reality of true commitment.
