Officials from Omni Hotels are scheduled to appear before the Metro Council on Tuesday during an information session on the proposed convention center headquarters hotel.
The joint committee meeting, set for 4 p.m., is to be conducted by the council’s Budget and Finance and the Convention, Tourism and Public Entertainment Facilities committees. Council members Megan Barry and Rip Ryman chair the committees, respectively.
Metro’s nine-member Convention Center Authority last week signed off on an intergovernmental agreement with Omni, which establishes a public-private financing deal, and the site plan for the new hotel which will be situated along Fifth Avenue South to anchor the $585 million Music City Center.
The agreement now awaits approval from the council, which will take up the matter at its Oct. 19 meeting through a single vote resolution.
The cost of the new Omni Hotel is projected to be $273 million. Under the plan approved by the authority, Metro would pay Omni $25 million in tax-increment financing in 2011, and another $103 million over 20 years from revenue generated by the hotel through tourist-targeted taxes. Omni would cover the rest of the cost.
The 260-foot tall hotel would include four restaurants, 560 parking spaces, 60,000 square feet of meeting space, a spa and fitness center, and a sky bridge connecting its fourth floor to the convention center, among other features.
One question some council members may have for Omni executives involves a possible physical connection between an expanded Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum and the hotel.
Mayor Karl Dean and other project leaders have discussed the physical tie-in, but an agreement between Omni and the museum still hasn’t been hammered out.