Oct. 04–Loews Hotels & Co. is entering the St. Louis market with a new $65 million hotel at the second phase of the Ballpark Village mixed-use development next to Busch Stadium downtown.

The Cardinals, a co-developer with Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. on Ballpark Village, said construction on the $260 million second phase is slated to begin by the end of this year.

The new Live! by Loews-St. Louis hotel is a partnership between New York-based Loews Hotels & Co., Cordish and the St. Louis Cardinals.

The new Loews hotel will open in late 2019 and have 200 employees, Loews Hotels & Co. Chairman and CEO Jonathan Tisch told the Post-Dispatch in a phone interview. "We look for opportunities to partner with first class developers and owners of unique destinations, and that certainly is the case with St. Louis and Ballpark Village," Tisch said, adding the hotel will draw baseball fans and convention attendees.

The hotel at Clark and 8th streets will have 216 rooms, a fitness facility and 17,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including a grand ballroom and outdoor event terrace. Dallas-based HKS Architects Hospitality Studio is designing the hotels' exterior architecture and interior design, which will be "influenced by local St. Louis character, including inspiration used for Busch Stadium," Loews said in a statement.

Loews Hotels & Co., which owns or operates 24 hotels and resorts in the U.S. and Canada, is a subsidiary of Loews Corp., a publicly traded company that also owns CNA Financial Corp., Diamond Offshore Drilling and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners.

Loews Hotels & Co. has expanded its Midwest hotel portfolio in recent years with hotels in Chicago and Minneapolis. The company recently announced plans for new 800-room convention center hotel in Kansas City that's slated to open in 2020.

The Live! by Loews-St. Louis hotel will be Loews' second "Live!" branded hotel, after a location in Arlington, Texas, opens that's being developed by Cordish, the Texas Rangers and the city of Arlington.

On Wednesday, the Cardinals also released some updated details about the next phase of Ballpark Village, which will have 550,000 square feet of space. The dollar amount of Ballpark Village's second phase is larger than the previous estimate of $220 million. In addition to the hotel, the second phase also will include a 29-story luxury high-rise apartment tower, the first Class-A office building built in downtown St. Louis in nearly 30 years, and additional retail and entertainment tenants.

"Just as the first phase of Ballpark Village created more than 1,000 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent new jobs when it opened, the second phase of Ballpark Village stands to create 1,500 construction jobs and more than 1,000 permanent new jobs," the Cardinals said in a statement.

PwC is considering relocating its downtown St. Louis office at 800 Market Street to Ballpark Village, according to real estate sources, but the accounting firm did not return calls seeking comment about a possible move.