For nearly a decade, New Orleans tourism officials have delivered the same warning — without a hotel attached to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the city will keep losing conventions to competitors that already have one.
Orlando and Atlanta are the most direct competitors in the region, and both are actively expanding. Atlanta recently added the Signia by Hilton, giving it a headquarters hotel on either side of its convention center, and Orlando already has two hotels connected to its convention center, plus a third within walking distance.
Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago and Philadelphia are all adding hotel inventory and convention space of their own. Las Vegas, for instance, just completed an expansion of their convention center and has announced another is in the works.
In New Orleans, discussions with Omni Hotels & Resorts began in 2018. An earlier version of the project — planned for a site upriver — stalled over financing. That changed when Omni’s parent company, Dallas-based TRT Holdings, agreed to fund the project itself rather than relying on outside lenders. At the time the site also shifted to the block now occupied by the Sugar Mill event venue, directly across from the convention center.
The current project is a $600 million, 27-story, 1,000-room hotel. It will be the largest new hotel built in New Orleans in nearly 50 years, and one of the largest public-private partnerships in state history.
On June 24, the New Orleans City Council unanimously approved the zoning changes needed to move the project forward, clearing a major hurdle toward a construction start this fall. But the project has also drawn scrutiny over its financing, including a state sales tax break estimated at roughly $265 million over 45 years and a rebate of hotel taxes that could add another $250 million or more, prompting an independent watchdog group to question whether the public is shouldering too much of the cost.
Jim Cook took over as the convention center’s president and CEO in August 2025 after a decade as general manager of the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel and more than two decades in hospitality leadership with Marriott. He inherited a project with its core business terms already in place and spent his first year steering it through zoning, tax and community approvals.
“The core business terms of what it would take to bring the Omni investment to bear … had been struck between the authority and Omni [by the time I arrived],” Cook said, describing a minimum $550 million cash commitment from Omni alongside a package of tax incentives and a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILOT, agreement. Unlike many PILOTs that waive property taxes altogether, this one has Omni paying taxes comparable to competing hotels.
“They’re simply seeking to not be penalized for being brand new,” he added.
Since Cook’s involvement in the project his team has created the economic development subdistrict needed to levy a new 2% tax on hotel sales, worked through zoning and historic preservation approvals — including clearing the demolition of the Sugar Mill site with the Historic District Landmarks Commission — and continued negotiating with the state and the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District over additional incentives.
“A lot has happened,” Cook says. “The good thing is we’re still on track.”
Room for more rooms?
The case for a headquarters hotel comes straight from the customers the convention center is trying to win. A survey by the Professional Convention Management Association found that 82% of members reported a headquarters hotel would make them more likely to consider New Orleans for a future convention.
Cook said planners who have held conventions in New Orleans have expressed a hesitancy to return due to the lack of hotel rooms close to the convention center.
But would adding 1,000 new rooms hurt existing area hotels? According to Hotel Valuation Systems (HVS) — a firm the convention center hired to study whether the market could absorb 1,000 new rooms — adding more rooms would lead to more business, specifically the attraction of 20 to 27 new existing events to the city over time.
“Let’s say the market right now is at 68% occupancy,” Cook explained. “We add 1,000 rooms to the market, and for the first couple of years, without new demand, we might drop — so we’ll go from 68, maybe down to 65 or 66. Within four years, we’ll be back to 68, and then we’ll grow from there as those new groups become part of our new normal.”
That growth is projected to generate an estimated $213 million in annual economic activity — a figure that encompasses the combined value created at the Omni and at other hotels, restaurants and transportation businesses that benefit when new groups and individual travelers come to the city for conventions.
Cook — who has worked as a hotelier in multiple markets — feels the additional capacity will not only not harm the hotels already in operation, it will benefit the local hotel industry as a whole.
“When new inventory arrives in a market, owners become more aggressive in investing in their hotel to retain competitiveness,” he said. “I think that this will act as a catalyst for all of the other hotels … and we will benefit as a community when a larger portion of our hotels are showing as best as they possibly could.”
Cook said that he was struck by the breadth of support the project drew at meetings before the City Council, including from hoteliers who might otherwise see a new headquarters hotel as competition.
“They all understand that for our city to be successful, and for each individual hotel and each restaurant to be successful, we as a city need to win business against other cities first,” he said. “Then we figure out where the business goes…We let the customers decide that.”
Addressing concerns
Cook said the earliest and most persistent concerns about the headquarters hotel project came from neighbors in the condominium buildings that ring the site, many of whom expressed concerns about the proposed hotel’s parking demands and the sheer scale of a 27-story tower moving in next door. Omni responded by increasing the number of parking spaces in the building and redirecting garage access, so it opens onto Convention Center Boulevard rather than the residential side of South Peters Street. The design team also reworked the building’s base to better fit the existing aesthetic of the Warehouse District.
“[Omni was] thoughtful about recognizing that they’re new and paying homage to the community,” Cook said, noting the tower will shift to “a much different look, sleeker glass” above the podium.
Cook noted that similar care went into the project’s local-hiring commitments. Omni agreed to using a specific percentage of small and emerging businesses on the construction side, and its contractor hosted a subcontractor meeting at the convention center that drew more than 200 local firms.
“It’s hard to break through with local talent” when large national developers already have their own partnerships in place,” Cook noted. “I really feel confident that they’re working hard to do that.”
Much of the rest of the project’s final design was shaped by the Neighborhood Participation Program, which drew participation of more than 450 locals. The biggest change, Cook shared, involved the Mississippi River Heritage Park. The original design called for using roughly half of the park for a resort-style entrance between South Peters Street and Convention Center Boulevard.
“There was fierce resistance to that among the neighborhood,” he said, “and Omni went back and redrew the design. It’s why the design is now shorter than it was.” The two ballrooms, a 30,000-square-foot grand ballroom and a 15,000-square-foot junior ballroom, were originally going to be stacked one above the other, adding roughly 40 to 50 feet to the building’s height. They will now share a floor.
“We actually like the results … now we’ve got a space adjacent to the convention center and the hotel that could be activated for events,” Cook said, adding that Omni has floated ideas for connecting to the park directly, potentially with a coffee shop facing it, though nothing is finalized. “We think it’s a win-win,” Cook added, noting that neighbors will also benefit from having a place to walk, sit or spend time outdoors.
Cook was quick to praise District B Councilmember Lesli Harris for playing a central role in the project.
“Councilmember Harris has been a champion all the way on this project,” he said. “She really understands the value of the economic development, [but] I really give her credit because she acted as a champion for the neighbors as well.”
Cook recalled Harris telling him at one point that the project “could not touch a blade of grass”—a line the project ultimately honored, even though it meant a taller building. When neighbors objected to the height, Cook said, Harris was the one who helped explain the trade-off, noting “There’s a project that looks like there’s a good chance it’s going to happen, and we all need to work through our priorities.”
Omni’s willingness to self-finance the project is what ultimately made the deal possible. The brand was originally selected around 2017 to manage a hotel planned for a different site upriver, under separate ownership. When that location became less viable, Omni stayed in the conversation as the convention center searched for alternatives.
When the Sugar Mill site emerged as an option, Omni’s parent company went further than anyone expected.
“Our ownership, TRT Holdings, would like to be the investor and will own the hotel and operate it,” Cook recalls the company telling him — an offer that he said became “the genesis of the development agreement that we have now.”
Taking financing risk off the table, explained Cook, changed everything.
“Projects like this all make sense until you try and figure out how to give the bank confidence to loan the money,” he added. “In this case, TRT Holdings, I like to say, has $550 million in their mattress in Texas, and they’re willing to bring it to New Orleans.” Cook said the site’s proximity to the Warehouse District, the Central Business District and the French Quarter made it especially attractive to Omni.
The Convention Center Authority is matching Omni’s development and construction costs dollar-for-dollar up to $80 million — a direct cash investment Cook said the Authority expects to recoup over time through land rent.
Work in progress
The state, meanwhile, is being asked to support the project using new sales tax revenue generated specifically by the hotel over a 45-year term. Cook said the Convention Center is discussing an alternative with Omni — paying the net present value of that 45-year stream upfront, which he estimates at just under $36 million, rather than stretching it out.
“It’s just like if you buy a house for $300,000; and you don’t actually pay $300,000, you pay a lot more than that by the time you pay it off,” he explained. Borrowing the roughly $35 million needed to cover the state’s obligation would ultimately cost around $118 million if financed over time rather than paid in cash up front.
That financing structure is at the heart of the criticism the project has faced. A report last year from the Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR) found the public could end up covering between one-third and more than half of the project’s cost under the incentives proposed at the time.
“I think mathematically it’s accurate,” Cook said of BGR’s findings, though he notes the exact dollar figures depend on which financial projections are used. “[Regarding] the concept, we completely agree with them, and that’s why we’re trying to use their recommendation.”
BGR recommended buying down the incentives with an up-front payment, which Cook calls the most efficient use of public funds, provided the authority has the borrowing capacity to do it.
Next steps
With zoning approval secured, the next steps before construction can begin include securing final City Council approvals and permitting, followed by work among the authority, other taxing bodies and Omni to finalize the commitments already made. Once underway, construction is expected to take about four years, during which the project is estimated to generate more than 2,500 jobs, with 300 to 350 workers on-site at peak — a number Cook said could grow once the building is enclosed. The goal is to begin site work, including pilings, this fall, in part to reduce the risk that high river levels could halt subsurface construction.
“We saw this when the [nearby] Shell Gulf of America headquarters was first being built, and the pilings were going in — there were several delays,” Cook explained. Barring similar setbacks, he expects the hotel to open in late 2029 or early 2030. Because the hotel isn’t physically connected to the Convention Center, he doesn’t anticipate major disruptions to normal operations, though there could be temporary lane closures on Convention Center Boulevard as materials are delivered.
Cook said he hopes the project sends a broader message about New Orleans.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve done a project of this scale, and I think the way that the whole community came together to support this project hopefully sends a message to other developers that New Orleans can do big projects, and we can get things done when we all see the true value for the community,” he said. “We’re definitely a community that can pull together when we see that everybody can benefit.”
