Two major hotel announcements hit in the last few days: TRC Capital Partners announced it will develop a full-service hotel in the Med Center, and Houston First/Rida broke ground on the buzzed-about Marriott Marquis by the GRB. The latter is the culmination of 20 months of design by Morris Architects (hopefully they're taking a vacation now)—when the hotel opens in 2016, we’ll be only the sixth city in the nation to have a Marriott Marquis. (The flag is reserved for large convention hotels of iconic design.) Morris VP Doug Childers tells us it'll be a critical catalyst for transformation of the convention/entertainment district.

The hotel, which broke ground Friday, will add 1,000 rooms and 100k SF of meeting space—as well as restaurants on all four corners and a world-class 11k SF sports bar fronting Discovery Green—to the convention center district. The property will include a 29-story glass tower and an amenity deck with a Texas Sky River (rendered here—imagine floating 110 feet in the air). Another fun feature: The south face of the building will be almost entirely transparent to the park.

A hop down 288, TRC Capital Partners (an affiliate of Redstone Cos) and Medistar Corp entered into a JV to develop a full-service hotel at 6750 Main St. The property will include 250 rooms, many of which will be suites catering to longer-term Medical Center guests. The team is also including 40 to 60 apartments for people who want to live immediately adjacent to the hospitals. HOK’s Roger Soto is handling design. The property is slated to break ground in Q4; no brand/operator has been chosen yet. Redstone has a history in the Med Center—it previously owned the Crown Plaza and Medical Center/Wells Fargo Bank Building. The Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women was eventually constructed on a portion of that site.