Westin brand to downtown Austin

AUSTIN – White Lodging Services Corp. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. have revealed that the 17-story hotel at the northeast corner of East Fifth St. and San Jacinto Blvd. will be a Westin with 326 rooms.

Plans for the Westin Austin Downtown call for a full-service restaurant managed by White Lodging.

The hotel, to be known as the Westin Austin Downtown, is expected to break ground this summer. It is projected to generate more than 130 permanent jobs and about $4.5 million a year in property tax revenue.

White Lodging is also building two other hotels downtown — a $300 million, 1,012-room JW Marriott convention hotel at Second St. and Congress St. and a 296-room Hyatt Place at Third St. and San Jacinto St.

The JW Marriott will be the largest hotel in Austin, and the largest JW Marriott in the U.S. to date.

Downtown’s hotel rooms were about 75 percent occupied in 2011, and were 77 percent occupied through September 2012, according to PKF Consulting USA.

Read more at the Austin American-Statesman.