The dusty parking lot at the end of Fayetteville Street is officially history, with fences, cranes and crews now ripping up asphalt to clear the way for downtown Raleigh’s long-planned Omni hotel. The new tower will rise across from the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts and is pitched as a key piece of the city’s broader convention center expansion, promising hundreds of hotel rooms, fresh meeting space and street-level restaurants that could reset the downtown hospitality scene.
Construction has formally kicked off at the site, with fencing around the lot and heavy equipment on the ground, according to ABC11. In a statement to the station, Omni Hotels & Resorts President Kurt Alexander said, “We are thrilled to be joining the downtown community in Raleigh.” A hotel spokesperson also confirmed that Bob’s Steak & Chop House and a coffee shop are locked in as ground-floor tenants, and Omni told ABC11 it expects construction to wrap in the fourth quarter of 2028.
What’s being built
The city tapped Omni in 2023 and directed staff to hammer out development terms with the company and its partners Preston Hollow Community Capital and Provident Resources Group, according to a Visit Raleigh press release. That announcement outlined an early concept in the range of roughly 500 to 550 rooms, plus tens of thousands of square feet of meeting space, along with rooftop amenities and a signature spa.
Plans have expanded
Since that initial reveal, the project has bulked up. More recent coverage puts the hotel closer to about 600 rooms and pegs the overall price tag in the hundreds of millions, while layering in additional food and beverage spots and a larger ballroom, Raleigh Magazine reported. The beefed-up plan calls for a mix of convention capacity and amenities such as a rooftop pool, multiple restaurants and expanded meeting halls intended to serve both event-goers and downtown locals looking for a night out.
Why it matters for Raleigh
City officials and tourism advocates have been pushing for a walkable, full-service convention hotel for years, arguing that it is the missing link for landing larger conferences and touring productions downtown, as reported by WRAL. Visit Raleigh’s earlier materials similarly cast the Omni as a cornerstone project for boosting visitor spending and local employment, tying the hotel directly to long-term plans to grow Wake County’s tourism economy.
Local businesses react…