Liens filed against Marriott near $1M
Hotel on West Third Street still slated to open in March
The issues that have dogged development of the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel on West Third Street have not been limited to subsurface soil conditions or a delay in delivery of construction materials.
Several liens have been filed by contractors — totaling close to a million dollars — against the developer, Duke Lodging Rome, since July of 2017.
The largest of the liens, for $848,280.28, was filed Nov. 16, 2017, by Hogan Construction Group, the general contractor for the project. Big Red Construction filed a lien Sept. 21, 2017, for $101,655. Most recently, Latin Electric Workforce filed a lien Jan. 11 of this year for $30,697.40.
“It’s not good, but it’s not the end of the world,” said Rome City Attorney Frank Beacham.
He explained that generally contractors who file liens are stating for the record that they have not been paid in whole or in part.
In spite of the liens, which serve as a mechanism to assure ultimate payment of contractors, work is still progressing on the hotel. Sub-contractors were busy installing lighting fixtures on the back patio of the hotel, cutting and laying tile in the main lobby and doing work in the ground floor parking garage on Wednesday.
The Hogan lien said its payment was due on or after Nov. 10, 2017, “the date that labor, equipment, materials and/or services were provided.”
The Big Red Construction lien states its last day on the job was July 28, 2017. The Latin Electric Workforce lien claim alleges its payment was due back on Oct. 14, 2017.
Hotel General Manager Bob Johnson said the Courtyard is slated to open the first week of March.
In December, the Rome City Commission approved an extension of the deadline for the Marriott to get a certificate of occupancy on March 2.
The city and Floyd County agreed to provide $2,504,124 in Tax Allocation District financial assistance for the developers over a 12-year period of time. The TAD funds would essentially represent a partial rebate of increased property taxes that the hotel would generate.
In December 2015, Duke Hospitality officials, the parent company of Duke Lodging Rome, said the $2.5 million was needed to make the financial package work for what was billed at that time as a $14.6 million 124-room hotel.