SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Marriott Syracuse Downtown, the historic hotel that’s been part of the downtown Syracuse landscape since 1924, is ready to welcome guests once again.
The hotel’s owner and property-management group on Friday 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 Friday morning’s 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 hotel underwent a more than two-year, $76 million renovation project to prepare the venue to serve as Onondaga County’s convention-center hotel.
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.
The hotel is the official headquarters hotel for the Onondaga County Convention Center. It represents “the spirit of Syracuse,” Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner said in her remarks.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com