Nov. 27, 2002 - The JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa, slated to open Saturday, is nearly full for December and expecting three huge first-time-in-Arizona groups to pack the guest rooms and ballrooms in January. 

"If we don't rent one (more) room night to a leisure guest, we'll still be at 75 percent occupancy for January, and even higher in February, March and April," said Steve Hart, general manager of the $300 million, 950-room hotel and convention center. Occupancy is the percentage of available rooms booked. 

Hart said he is taking reservations as far into the future as 2009, and many are from big groups that previously gave the Valley a pass because there wasn't a hotel and convention center large enough. 

"We will be the largest luxury resort convention hotel west of the Mississippi and not in Las Vegas," Hart said. "It will be great for meetings and conventions that can come to Phoenix now but couldn't before." 

The Marriott, near Tatum Boulevard and Loop 101 in northeast Phoenix, is the last and largest of three new resorts to open in the Valley within the last two months. The 500-room Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort on the Gila River Indian Community opened Oct. 5, and the 735-room Westin Kierland Resort on the Phoenix-Scottsdale border started serving guests Nov. 3. All three properties target the upscale meetings market. 

The three new inns have upped the Valley's hotel room count by about 4 percent and launched a major challenge to Scottsdale's resort supremacy. 

But JW Marriott marketing director Doug Gennardo said the new hotel will be a boon to all the rest by driving business to the Valley that would otherwise go to Las Vegas. 

In fact, the JW Marriott has a Las Vegas-like grand entrance, with a sweeping drive along a massive lawn leading to a porte cochere that can accommodate 24 cars. A chorus line of dancing fountains stretches the length of the porte cochere, creating what Gennardo labels "sensory overload." 

"The idea is to have a grand sense of arrival, so people will think they have just found a fabulous destination," he said. 

Inside, the water theme continues. The six-story lobby includes a fountain-waterfall that cascades down either side of a grand staircase from the front entry to the lower level, which opens out to a lagoon, a four-pool water playground and a lake on the golf course beyond. 

Fire, water, earth and sky are the resort themes, Gennardo said. Fountains are everywhere -- in the pools and on the lawns. More than two dozen fire pits are interspersed throughout the grounds. For hungry guests, the Marriott will offer four major restaurants: Blue Sage by Coyote Grill owner Mark Miller, Roy's by Roy Yamaguchi, Tuscany, an upscale Italian eatery, and the Meritage Steak House overlooking the golf course. 

There are five other dining options ranging from Starbucks to a high-tech poolside eatery. Hart said employees will take orders from customers lounging by the pools and enter the information into a palm-sized device that communicates to the kitchen. When an order is ready, the system will dispatch a server to deliver it promptly, Hart said. It will be the first Marriott to pilot the system, he said. 

The spa will open Dec. 15, Gennardo said, but the rest of the resort's amenities will be open day one. They include two golf courses, which have already attracted local aficionados, he said, plus eight tennis courts, all the water features, shops, bars, restaurants, botanical garden and convention center. 

Clearly, the meeting space is the top draw. A 17,000-square-foot grand foyer in the convention center is framed by two big ballrooms. The foyer is larger than two-thirds of the ballrooms in other Valley hotels, Hart said. The smallest of the two big ballrooms on either side of the foyer is bigger than the largest ballroom currently in Arizona, which is at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, Hart said. The largest ballroom can break down into 13 separate meeting rooms with moveable walls. 

The resort also has a couple of smaller ballrooms that can be separated into three large meeting rooms each, plus a wing full of board-sized meeting rooms. And there are three "entertainment lawns," Hart said, for parties, dinners and other big outdoor get-togethers. The Phoenix resort is the 25th JW Marriott, Gennardo said, a brand developed to forge a luxury level between the company's Marriott and Ritz Carlton brands. 

Rooms during December are going for a bargain $99, he said, but high season kicks into gear Jan. 3, and the cheapest room is $429. 

For an additional $200 a night, a guest can opt for one of the 54 rooms in the Cloud Club. Hart labels the Cloud Club, "a boutique hotel within the hotel" with its own lobby, lounge, free Internet, movies, phone calls, shoe shines and pants pressings, butler-like service and limo airport pick-ups. 

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(c) 2002, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. MAR,