Demolition on the site of Austin's third convention center hotel is all but complete as the nearby Fairmont, the largest hotel in Austin, prepares to open.

The soon-to-break-ground 31-story hotel, known as either Marriott on Cesar Chavez or Marriott Downtown, pulled demolition permits last fall and is slated to open in March 2020. The property, like the Fairmont, is expected to be integrated into the long-delayed convention center expansion, if or when that happens. And, like the Fairmont, it is expected to have a skybridge into the convention center, as reported by the Austin Towers blog last summer.

The expansion of the convention center, a $400M extension to the west, has been the subject of some controversy at City Council and has been overshadowed by accusations of wasteful spending at the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. San Antonio completed a $325M expansion of its Downtown convention space last year.

The 613-room Marriott on Cesar Chavez would actually be smaller than the nearby JW Marriott, with 60K SF of meeting space, an outdoor corner bar and a Marriott M Club Lounge. The hotel will have four levels of below-grade parking.

Indianapolis-based White Lodging, which developed the downtown JW Marriott, Aloft/Element and the Westin, is also tied to the Marriott on Cesar Chavez. The company also expects to put an Autograph/AC Collection hotel on land that was once the McDonald's on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The combined investment of the Marriott on Cesar Chavez and the Autograph/AC Collection is projected at $220M, according to the Austin Business Journal.

Numbers out of the Downtown Austin Alliance last spring report a Downtown hotel occupancy rate of 81% and an average daily hotel rate of $219. As of April, Downtown Austin had 9,700 available hotel rooms.

Architect Michael Strohmer, who designed the Marriott on Cesar Chavez, is the lead in HKS Architects' hospitality studio. HKS also has designed the JW Marriott, The Ashton and the IBC Bank building.