Go inside downtown Tampa's new JW Marriott, the first brand-new building to open in Water Street
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Dec 19, 2020

Until the last few weeks, Ron McAnaugh tried his hardest to stay out of the JW Marriott, Water Street Tampa's new 26-story convention hotel.

"No good would come out of it," said McAnaugh, an area general manager for Marriott International Inc. whose properties include the JW and neighboring Marriott Water Street. "I’d just worry, are we going to finish on time?"

McAnaugh needn't have worried: The JW's 519 rooms and two restaurants are ready right on time, and the gleaming, modern space will host its first guests on Monday. It is the host hotel for Super Bowl LV, set for Feb. 7 at Raymond James Stadium.

Still, it isn't quite what either McAnaugh or developer Strategic Property Partners once envisioned for the opening: Before the novel coronavirus pandemic decimated leisure and business travel, Marriott anticipated 800 employees between the JW and Marriott Water Street. When the JW opens, there will be 400 employees between the two properties. Of the JW's 200 employees, about a quarter transferred from the Marriott Water Street.

Pandemic or not, the opening of the JW is a watershed moment for Water Street Tampa. It is the first new building to open within Water Street, the $3 billion-plus, mixed-use district under construction between the Channel district and central business district. Others will follow in short order; apartment tower Heron, situated at the southern entrance to the Tampa Riverwalk, is preleasing, with the first residents to take occupancy in March. Office tower 1001 Water Street and several other buildings are well underway, rising above Amalie Arena on what was once a string of desolate gravel lots.

But the JW's opening holds even more significance than being Water Street's first brand-new building to open its doors. Long before Water Street had a name — or even a master plan in place — Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik envisioned a new convention hotel in downtown Tampa. In 2014, months before unveiling a conceptual vision for Water Street, Vinik's real estate executives secured a rezoning approval to make way for the JW on what was previously Amalie Arena's silver parking lot.

Vinik controls SPP along with Cascade Investment Fund LLC, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates' investment fund.

Between the Marriott Water Street and the JW, Tampa now has 1,246 hotel rooms within steps of the Tampa Convention Center. Both hotels offer restaurants meant to appeal to both conventiongoers and locals; a $50 million renovation of the Marriott Water Street created sports bar Garrison Tavern and the more upscale Anchor and Brine, with outdoor dining overlooking the waterfront. The JW will open with two restaurants: Driftlight, a casual dining spot on the first floor, and Six, a more eclectic bar and restaurant on the sixth floor. It also has a space near the parking garage for an ever-rotating selection of pop-up concepts, called Turntable.

The JW was built around meeting space: One of the hotel's most distinguishing architectural features is a glass meeting room, suspended three stories over the hotel lobby. The entire third floor is dedicated to small breakout rooms; the fourth floor is ballrooms. And before the pandemic, there was no shortage of demand for that kind of space: In Tampa, real estate developers were adding event space to just about any type of property as a way to drive additional revenue. McAnaugh said the Marriott Water Street was on track to have record years in 2020 and 2021.

"The restaurants were really clicking, and everything was just firing on all cylinders," he said. "And then the bottom just dropped out."

There are still conventions on the books, McAnaugh says, beginning in April and May. But with the timetable for the Covid-19 vaccine distribution unknown for the general population, he isn't optimistic all of those events will happen this year."What we’re seeing is people are still canceling," he said. "When you get within six months of the event, they start to make decisions."

The good news, he says, is that most events are being moved rather than canceled. There's also been a boost from the Toronto Raptors' move to Amalie Arena; many of the team executives are planning to move from the Marriott Water Street to suites at the JW when it opens.

The Raptors have also taken over a big chunk of the JW's event space: The hotel's fourth floor, which was all ballrooms, has been converted to the team's training facility. That's guaranteed through March but could be extended through the end of June, McAnaugh said, and is a source of revenue, though it doesn't quite compare to a spate of extravagant events.

"It’s not huge; I’ll be honest," he said. "We looked at it as more of the opportunity to get the rooms, especially when you factor in the visiting teams."

Transforming the ballrooms into a basketball practice facility took about a week. When discussions initially began, McAnaugh said he didn't have much hope that the hotel would land the training facility; instead, he suspected the team would head to the University of South Florida for training.

"They said, 'Can you take the chandeliers down?'" McAnaugh said. "Well, we can do anything, it’s just about time and money. Before we knew it, they were ready to sign."

As it stands now, the NFL has booked 1,000 of the two hotel's 1,246 rooms for Super Bowl week. But that's ever changing, McAnaugh says, as the league works through exactly how many employees will be traveling to Tampa.

While the Super Bowl is a big opportunity, it's also a big challenge, as the hotels aren't currently operating as they would at close to full capacity. The weekend of Dec. 19, about 300 of the Marriott Water Street's 727 rooms were occupied.

McAnaugh says he has it good compared to colleagues at other hotels. Friends who hold his same position in New York and Portland, Oregon, tell him they have 10 to 20 rooms occupied.

"We never hit the bottom that some people did," he said.

But even while navigating a global pandemic, McAnaugh is generally upbeat. Marriott is stringent about Covid-19 precautions; no one is allowed in either of his hotels without a mask. Training the 200 JW employees required a large space, as they were masked and spread out more than 6 feet apart. There are employees who have had the virus, but in the vast majority of cases were brought in by an employee who contracted it off the clock.

"Sometimes I feel like I live in a bubble because we’ve been forging ahead," he said. "We are doing everything in our power to stay safe."