In July 2004, the Phoenix City Council approved a $350 million convention center hotel that would be owned by Phoenix and developed and operated by Sheraton Hotels as a Starwood facility. The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel—the first new hotel built downtown since 1976—is the cornerstone of the city’s development and renewal process.

Lobby Entrance at 3rd Street

The City of Phoenix Hotel Corporation, solely owned by the City of Phoenix, managed the project’s tight financing and budget—and Parsons provided project management services as a consultant to a national development services firm during the construction of the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel. Preconstruction services included overseeing the budget, schedule, and quality of design documents; construction services included cost and schedule management in addition to construction quality through full-time onsite monitoring. Parsons managed these tasks using its proprietary software IMPACTteam.

Restaurant Bar

As project manager, Parsons was responsible for administering the overall project budget of $262 million, including the construction guaranteed maximum price (GMP), architecture-engineering fees, interior design fees, signage contracts, purchasing agent contracts, insurance, and furniture, fixtures, and equipment. We also coordinated with regulatory and utility agencies.

The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel is one of the city’s first projects incorporating building information modeling (BIM) techniques for the facility’s design and construction, which helped the project save time and money. Because this Parsons project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget, the client will use the remaining funds for future site enhancements.

The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel is the largest and tallest hotel in Arizona. Standing 360 ft high with 31 floors, this magnificent design provides street vibrancy and a visual relationship into the generous scenes of the hotel's restaurants, lobby, and ballrooms. This new, striking, silhouetted skyline of Phoenix is highlighted by the hotel’s cloudlike white rooftop that turns strikingly translucent in the evening. The 1.1 million-ft² Sheraton has 1,000 rooms for those attending conference events and conventions in the downtown Phoenix area—it can accommodate the highest number of guests for events and meetings than any other hotel in the downtown area. Its 100,000 ft² of ballrooms and flexible state-of-the-art meeting space is an ideal venue for groups. The facility also provides a two-story, belowgrade parking structure of 550 spaces.

The Sheraton offers more than 80,000 ft² of meeting space, which includes a nearly 30,000-ft² ballroom, a 15,000-ft² junior ballroom, and an additional 28 meeting rooms. The hotel’s exterior offers colors in hues of red and gold that represent the desert sky at sunset—signifying its connection to the desert landscape—in addition to sculpted shading louvers on the building’s south face. The curved roofline reflects the angle of nearby Camelback Mountain.

Van Buren and 3rd Streets

Additional hotel amenities showcase an outdoor pool and meeting area, a street-level restaurant featuring al fresco dining, a 6,500-ft² spa and fitness center—as well as an innovative outdoor patio deck running the length of the entire building.

Conveniently located in the heart of Phoenix just 5 miles from Sky Harbor International Airport and one block from the Phoenix Convention Center, this project is vital to the downtown area and local economy. Along with the expansion of the Phoenix Convention Center, the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel places Phoenix as a top destination for conventions, corporate meetings, and major sporting events such as the NBA All-Star game coming to Phoenix in February 2009.

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