New hotel: Work begins, groundbreaking set

MUNCIE – Work has already begun on Muncie's latest big project: a downtown hotel, restaurant and hospitality industry training center.

Site excavation work has begun at the end of High Street downtown for the new facility with a name that's a mouthful: Courtyard by Marriott Muncie at the Horizon Convention Center.

The project itself is even bigger than its name: Budgeted at $29 million — $40 million if you count an adjacent city parking garage and quiet zone nearby to lessen train whistles — the hotel will be six stories tall with 150 guest rooms, two meeting rooms, a Thr3e Wise Men restaurant, shops operated by people with disabilities and the training center by The Arc of Indiana, an advocacy group for the disabled. Arc Innovations is overseeing the project.

"What it means to the city of Muncie and the state of Indiana is almost unimaginable," Mayor Dennis Tyler told The Star Press. "That people with disabilities can be trained and go back to their home communities and become employed in the hotel industry is great.

"But we'll have a great hotel and $300,000 annually in property taxes alone. It's pretty exciting."

The project, first covered by The Star Press in February 2013, will be downtown's first hotel since the Roberts closed in 2006. But the project has become a centerpiece of Tyler's first term as mayor and ties in with his administration's efforts to make the city known for its accessibility with sidewalk improvements and ambitious accessibility plans for the beach at Prairie Creek Reservoir.

But the effort hasn't been a cheap one and includes the city garage and quiet zone with a combined cost to be covered by $16 million in bonds being issued by the city.

Tyler has maintained that the new hotel, 400-space garage and quiet zone are important not only to the hotel and nearby Horizon Convention Center but downtown and the city as a whole. In a March ceremony, Gov. Mike Pence called the project unique in its potential to better the lives of the state's disabled workers, who face a high unemployment rate.

Kim Dodson, associate executive director of The Arc of Indiana, said this week that the entire project could be ready in less than a year.

"We'll be be opened up by Oct. 1, 2015," Dodson said. The garage is expected to be completed at least a couple of months before the hotel is ready. An enclosed connector between the hotel and convention center will also be built.

Work on the project — which will dominate the southern end of downtown, extending from the Walnut Street roundabout then across High Street to take up much of the current convention center/Muncie Children's Museum parking lot — has begun with preliminary excavation, Dodson said. Initial work a few months ago turned up a street made of bricks that will be used in the project. Dodson said Tuesday the latest work uncovered an old basement.

Construction will generate hundreds of construction jobs and Dodson said, "100 percent of the jobs are coming from the Muncie/Delaware County community."

Contact Keith Roysdon at (765) 213-5828 and follow him on Twitter: @keithroysdon

The Courtyard by Marriott, by the numbers

When it opens a little more than a year from now, the Courtyard by Marriott at the Horizon Convention Center in downtown Muncie will have a big impact on the local hotel business:

$29 million cost

150 rooms

Six floors

Thr3e Wise Men restaurant and bar

Hospitality industry training facility for the disabled