NEW ORLEANS – The development team of Carpenter & Co. and Woodward Design + Build’s won the right to start negotiating a lease deal with the City of New Orleans to transform the World Trade Center of New Orleans into a Four Seasons hotel and condominium complex.
According to Jaquetta White with The Advocate, the $364 million proposal would include 350 guest rooms, 76 hotel-serviced residences, two new low-rise structures, one containing a restaurant and the other a parking garage, a two-story rooftop cupola and a digital cultural attraction curated by Harvard African American studies professor Henry Louis Gates.
Carpenter & Co. and Woodward Design + Build’s proposal beat our 4 other groups in consideration Tuesday, and the development team now expects to sign a lease by May 7, 2015.
White reports a five-member selection committee appointed by the mayor met for 3 hours on Tuesday and evaluated all 5 proposals on the table. The panel included Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin, Cindy Connick, executive director of the Canal Street Development Corp. Bill Gilchrist, the city’s director of place-based planning, City Planning Commission Executive Director Bob Rivers and Ashleigh Gardere, executive director of the city’s Network for Economic Opportunity.
White reports rejected proposals were from 2 Canal Street Redevelopment, which wanted to instate a Conrad Hotel and residences, HRI Properties, which wanted to develop a luxury Starwood Hotels and Resorts property, Oxford Capital Group, which wanted to turn the 1960s-era office building into a Godfrey Hotel and Two Canal Street Investors, which submitted a proposal for a Hotel Alessandra.
The Four Season project will also include an urban park at Canal Street and Convention Center Boulevard, White reports.
