Omni Hotels & Resorts and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center are preparing to unveil a new design for their $590 million hotel, retooled after pushback from Warehouse District residents over plans to take over a public park.
The long-discussed project is now in its final stages of design and permitting after years of debate over location, scale, and financing. If all goes as planned, construction could begin next year. The proposal has drawn strong backing from Gov. Jeff Landry as well as local business and tourism leaders, who view the hotel as critical to New Orleans’ ability to attract major conventions and compete with cities such as Austin and Nashville.
A rendering of the new design for the Omni Hotel on Convention Center Boulevard, which would be the largest hotel built in New Orleans since the 1970s if it goes through as planned. The new design would include a main tower rising to 316 feet, or about 29 stories, on the edge of the Warehouse District.
The changes come after a round of recent neighborhood outreach meetings conducted by Michael Smith, head of development at Dallas-based Omni’s parent company, TRT Holdings; JT Hannan, the Convention Center’s head of strategy; City Council member for the district Lesli Harris; and New Orleans developer Darryl Berger, a longtime partner with Omni who was assisting with community engagement in a private capacity and is not a partner in the venture, Smith said in a telephone interview Friday.
The updated plan would no longer seek to take over the adjacent Mississippi River Heritage Park, a public green space that nearby residents had fought to preserve. In exchange, the design calls for a taller main tower to accommodate ballrooms and meeting spaces than had previously been planned at ground level.
“The Omni team took neighborhood concerns about the park to heart and went back to their design team to envision a model that leaves the park alone,” said Jim Cook, CEO of the Convention Center. “To accomplish this they needed to stack the ballrooms, which means two active floors instead of one and adds to the height of the podium and tower.”
Both the height and cost of the project will rise as a result of the redesign. The tower would stand 33 feet taller—about 316 feet in total, or roughly 29 stories—while the cost estimate has increased by $20 million to about $590 million.
The Festival Park section of the 1984 World’s Fair was located on land now occupied by Mississippi River Heritage Park in New Orleans’ Warehouse District, photographed on March 29, 2019. (Photo by Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune). The Omni Convention Center hotel plan would incorporate the park in ways yet to be set out by developers.
Smith said the taller design and removal of the park were well-received in general. “There are some people that don’t like the height at any level, but I think that the general consensus amongst people we talked to was that going from 283 feet to 316 feet was an inconsequential impact,” he said.
In addition to taking the hotel off the park and adding height, the new design also incorporates hotel parking within the development rather than relying on already existing nearby space.
The design firm for the project is Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio, which also designed Omni’s convention center hotel in Oklahoma City. Smith said Omni expects to begin the city’s permitting process once the new design is completed, with Mike Sherman serving as land consultant.
City Council member Lesli Harris, whose district includes the hotel site, acknowledged at one of the outreach meetings that the “trade-off” for preserving the park was to allow additional height, according to two people who attended. Harris declined to comment.
Some residents welcomed the design change insofar as it removes the park from the development plans but continued to question the height of the building, which would be about five times what is currently allowed by zoning rules.
“I still believe the size of the building they are planning would be tantamount to putting a Canal Street or Poydras Street structure in the middle of a historic district,” said Mary Arno, a resident at Federal Fibre Mills, a condominium complex adjacent to the hotel site.
Sharon Toups, another Fibre Mills condo owner, said residents aren’t opposed to a hotel that complies with the district’s height restriction but she also has concerns about the obtrusiveness of a 29-story tower and how the added traffic will be handled.
City approval sought
If approved by the City Council, the 1,000-room hotel would be the largest built in New Orleans in nearly half a century. The Convention Center’s leaders have long argued that a connected “headquarters” hotel is essential for the city to compete with destinations like Austin, Nashville and Orlando for major conventions.
The Convention Center has proposed several versions of a headquarters hotel over the past decade. Earlier concepts placed the hotel at the upriver end of the mile-long complex, in what is now the River District development site, but Omni eventually said it preferred a location closer to the French Quarter and the busier parts of the city.
Recent examples elsewhere in the South show how other cities are pairing new hotels with convention facilities. In Savannah, a 444-room Signia by Hilton is rising next to the Savannah Convention Center, part of a broader expansion meant to draw larger national events when it opens in 2028. Similar developments are also underway in Louisiana. In Baton Rouge, the renovated Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center added new meeting space and leveraged its downtown location near the city’s convention center to attract more group business.
The Convention Center board voted unanimously in January to enter into binding agreements with Omni’s parent company to develop the hotel on the former Sugar Mill site along Convention Center Boulevard. Construction is still expected to begin in early 2026 and be completed by 2029.
Under the existing terms, the Convention Center would pay roughly $73 million of the total cost, in addition to site acquisition expenses. The project is supported by a package of city and state tax incentives. Omni would sign a 60-year ground lease that pays rent and a profit share to the Convention Center based on hotel performance, with an option to purchase the property after 30 years.
State support
Gov. Jeff Landry, who appointed board chair Russell Allen last year, has described the project as a “gamechanger” for the state’s tourism industry, while business and hospitality leaders say it will help attract major conventions and spur upgrades at older hotels.
“This involves state land and investment but we expect that the city will benefit very much from the project and we are carefully going through the process with the city and the community,” Smith said.
Omni executives say they plan to present the revised design to city officials and the public later this fall. It will still require several approvals, including a height variance from the City Council.
The city of New Orleans did not respond to a request for comment.