Irving (WBAP/KLIF News) – Construction has started on a hotel at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas. The Westin Hotel will include 350 rooms and 16,000 square feet of meeting space.
“The Dallas and Fort Worth convention centers are much larger than we are,” says the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Maura Gast. “We’re focusing on a much different segment of the market that’s never going to be a fish out of water here.”
The $113 million hotel will aim to give conventions easier access to the facility.
“Meeting planners expect and often require a hotel attached or adjacent to the convention center for their VIPs and staff that’s running the convention,” Gast says. “They want it to be easy for them.”
At the same area near Highway 114 and Spur 348, the city is building Irving Music Factory, along with an amphitheater. Both should open this Fall.
Gast says the development aims to help Irving carve out an identity. She says Ben Carpenter supported the development of Las Colinas to give Irving a closer connection to DFW Airport.
“That’s why he created this other downtown, this more urban setting, which is a great compliment to the original downtown,” Gast says.
The hotel should open by the end of 2018.
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