Suburban Collection Showplace Breaks Ground on New Hyatt Place Hotel

officially broke ground on its new Hyatt Place hotel Tuesday morning.

The project is estimated to cost $8.5 million dollars, and construction is expected to be completed by July of 2013.

"It's been an incredibly long journey," said Blair Bowman, owner of Suburban Collection Showplace, who said the hotel has been a dream of his for six years.

The hotel will be six stories with 126 guest rooms, and it will be managed by Packard Hospitality Group of California.

The Hyatt will be attached to the east side of the Showplace, which Bowman said will help bring more business to the Showplace. He said the on-site hotel space will attract more conventions; several shows have decided not to come to the Showplace in the past because it lacked a hotel.

Suburban Collection Showplace is the only privately funded convention center in Michigan. It is a 320,000 square foot building with 215,000 square feet of exposition space.

Construction will include a 20,000 square feet expansion of the Showplace's Diamond Banquet and Conference Center, which will include 10 additional meeting rooms.

The hotel will feature a 24-hour fitness center, 24-hour guest kitchen, complimentary Wi-Fi, an indoor pool and an exterior courtyard that could be used for weddings or other events.

An investment in Novi

In October, the Novi City Council to the Showplace in which Bowman does not have to pay any property taxes on the hotel for six years.

Novi Mayor Bob Gatt spoke at the ceremony Tuesday on how the hotel will be a great investment in Novi.

Gatt said the project will bring hundreds of construction jobs to Novi within the next year, in addition to dozens of more jobs once the hotel is open in 2013.

He added that it will increase the economic vitality of the region, and he reflected on the history of Bowman's investment in Novi. Bowman helped develop the old Novi Expo Center out of an old warehouse; he then moved his convention center business to the Showplace once it was built. 

"In the early 1990s, I met a young man named Blair Bowman, who, as it turned out, was a visionary, a risk-taker, a businessman and someone who will eventually go into the history books as someone who helped make Novi a world-class city," Gatt said.

Novi City Manager Clay Pearson also spoke of the business the new hotel will bring to the city.

"It's going to help all of the restaurants in Novi, it's going to help all the services, the other hotels are all going to have benefits from this," he said.