Water Street Tampa's 500-room hotel, with 26th story rooftop lounge, set for city review
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 30, 2017

The massive convention hotel in Water Street Tampa will feature a rooftop lounge on the 26th story, a ground-floor restaurant and a restaurant with indoor/outdoor seating on the sixth floor.

The 500-room hotel, named 10 Water Street, will be built on Old Water Street, across from the Marriott Tampa Waterside Hotel & Marina. Strategic Property Partners, the developer of Water Street Tampa, revealed design plans for the property on Wednesday.

The new hotel will be connected to the existing Marriott, SPP said, and include 126,000 square feet of meeting and event space. The hotel will feature a 30,000-square-foot-ballroom, which SPP says is the largest in the Tampa Bay region.

A major convention hotel has been a public part of SPP's plans since late 2014, shortly after the group acquired the Marriott Waterside and received city approval to build a new hotel across the street. By building the hotel next to the Marriott - and the Tampa Convention Center - SPP is giving the city a better shot at landing bigger conventions and drawing more tourists to the urban core.

SPP, the real estate development company controlled by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Cascade Investment LLC, plans to submit the design plans for the hotel to the city of Tampa on Wednesday.

"The new hotel delivers an elevated guest experience for visitors and local residents alike by blending the indoor and outdoor experiences for a sense of understated luxury," Bryan Moll, director of development at SPP, said in a statement.

At completion, Water Street will be a $3 billion, mixed-use district between the Channel district waterfront and Tampa's central business district. 10 Water Street is the first private building within the district to be revealed. The design for the University of South Florida's Morsani College of Medicine's downtown campus - on the corner of Channelside Drive and Meridian Avenue, was unveiled earlier this summer. That project is now under construction.

10 Water Street will feature a full-service restaurant on the ground floor, as well as a 26th-story rooftop terrace and lounge. The sixth floor will be an amenity deck and include a pool terrace, a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating and a bar, a spa and fitness center and an event lawn.

The hotel flag for 10 Water Street was not revealed in Wednesday's announcement. The hotel has long been speculated in commercial real estate circles to be a J.W. Marriott. A proposed hotel development in Clearwater Beach, the region's first five-star hospitality property, recently landed the J.W. Marriott flag.

Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates are the architects on the project; Champalimaud will handle the interiors. The hotel will break ground in 2018, concurrent with more than a dozen other buildings in the first phase of Water Street Tampa. It is slated for completion in 2020.

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is senior reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.