SYRACUSE — After a more than two-year, $76 million renovation project, the hotel now known as the Marriott Syracuse Downtown is back in business. The hotel’s owner and property-management group on Aug. 19 raised the flags on the newly renovated hotel — formally re-opening the former Hotel Syracuse. “We’re open,” Ed Riley, the hotel’s owner […]
SYRACUSE — After a more than two-year, $76 million renovation project, the hotel now known as the Marriott Syracuse Downtown is back in business.
The hotel’s owner and property-management group on Aug. 19 raised the flags on the newly renovated hotel — formally re-opening the former Hotel Syracuse.
“We’re open,” Ed Riley, the hotel’s owner and developer, said in his remarks at the Aug. 19 opening event. “You can come here for lunch. You can come here for dinner. We even serve drinks here once in a while,” he quipped.
The historic hotel that’s been part of the downtown Syracuse landscape since 1924 will now serve as Onondaga County’s convention-center hotel.
It represents “the spirit of Syracuse,” Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner said in her remarks at the event.
Syracuse–based Hayner Hoyt Corp. was the general contractor and construction manager for the hotel renovation and restoration.
“We know we have a big responsibility, not only to ownership, but to the city of Syracuse to ensure that the Marriott Syracuse [Downtown] is successful,” Michael George, a Watertown native and president and CEO of Crescent Hotels & Resorts, said in his remarks at the morning event. Fairfax, Virginia–based Crescent Hotels & Resorts is the hotel’s property manager.
The property has 261 guest rooms; more than 41,000 square feet of meeting, wedding, and event space including a “completely modernized” Finger Lakes ballroom; two “historic” ballrooms; five in-house restaurants and bars; and eight meeting spaces, according to the Marriott Syracuse Downtown.
Each room and suite has been completely renovated. The work also included restoration of the hotel’s three ballrooms. Crews restored two of the ballrooms to their “original historic grandeur,” and the third was “modernized for today’s business needs,” the hotel added.
The hotel also includes restaurant Eleven Waters, described as a “Finger Lakes style bistro” serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It also boasts the Cavalier Room for cocktails and small plates during lunch and dinner.
In addition, restaurants Shaughnessy’s Irish Pub and the Legacy Steakhouse will open “later in the year,” according to the hotel.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com