Sep. 4, 2003 - A new $130 million Four Seasons luxury hotel and residential project being billed as an "urban resort" at Inner Harbor East will be unveiled today at a press conference at City Hall.

The 24-story project, to be built along the waterfront adjacent to the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, will feature 200 water view guest rooms and 20 waterfront extended stay apartment suites topped by 26 condominiums. It also will include 25,000-square-feet of meeting space, an 18,000-square-foot spa and fitness center and a luxury pool overlooking Baltimore's harbor.

"We're very excited," said Michael S. Beatty, principle and vice president of H&S Properties Development Corp. "I started working on trying to bring a Four Seasons to Baltimore three years ago, calling them every quarter. Baltimore has just grown up a lot. When they looked at the success of the Marriott and the fact that Baltimore is still very underhoteled, coupled with the specific location, it became an exciting venue."

Meanwhile, a rival Ritz-Carlton hotel and condominium project appears to be stalled across the water. That project, which has been in the works for three years, is proposed for the foot of Federal Hill by Giannasca Development Companies LLC.

The Four Seasons project, planned on a site that is now a 2-acre parking lot, is a consortium of Baltimore-based development and equity partners including John Paterakis Sr.'s H&S Properties, Ronald H. Lipscomb and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse.

Lipscomb, a local minority entrepreneur recognized for his quality urban construction projects and founder of Doracon Contracting, will head a group of minority business leaders who will hold 30 percent equity in the Four Seasons project. He has a long-standing relationship with H&S Propoerties, and is a current partner in their completed office, retail and apartment projects.

The mayor's office touted the minority component of the project.

"The fact that a significant portion of this hotel is minority owned proves that our efforts to promote and strengthen minority-owned business in Baltimore are working," said Rick Abbruzzese, deputy press secretary for Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley.

California-based Hill Glazier Architects are the architects on the project. They have designed several hundred hospitality projects in more than 25 countries, including 25 or 30 luxury hotels.

A letter of intent to be signed today by the developers and The Four Seasons states that The Four Seasons will manage the proposed hotel and residential project. Four Seasons currently manages 57 properties in 27 countries.

Construction is expected to begin in spring 2004, with an opening slated for 2006.

The Four Seasons would be H&S' third hotel in Inner Harbor East. The 750-room Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel opened in February 2001, and the 205-room Courtyard by Marriott two months earlier.

The project will feature three waterfront restaurants and 25,000-square-feet of upscale retail shops. A second phase calls for an additional 56 condominiums and additional retail and office space. The building will add about 350 new parking spaces to accommodate patron traffic.

Positioned at the point where the inner and outer harbors meet, the proposed hotel is on a prime piece of real estate, Beatty said.

"Any way you come into the city, you see it," he said. "It's such a prominent site, it deserves world class architecture."

It was the president of The Four Seasons who first noticed and commented on the fact that the windows overlooking the water faced into the setting sun, Beatty said. The swimming pools will get sun all day, he added.

The apartments are expected to appeal to families of international patients going to Johns Hopkins Hospital or to corporate executives visiting Baltimore for a month at a time, he said.

It will also feature meeting space where every meeting room has waterfront access.

"The meeting space is something that will draw mini high-end meetings to Baltimore, like the pharmaceutical industry," he said.

That industry is one that the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, charged with filling the Baltimore Convention Center, recently identified as among those it would like to attract to the city.

The Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public development agency, is in the process of selecting a developer to build an anchor hotel intended to help convention center managers, who have struggled in recent years in their efforts to draw major meetings to Baltimore.

The Marriott Waterfront was described as an anchor for the convention center when it was built about a mile away. Since it's opening, the Marriott has developed its own smaller-scale meeting business, certain to be enhanced by the new Four Seasons.

Meeting experts say Baltimore needs many more moderately priced hotel rooms close to the convention center to help it draw national meetings.

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