COLLEGE PARK, MD—A new luxury hotel and conference center will soon open directly across from the main entrance to the University of Maryland campus here. Slated to open in July, The Hotel at the University of Maryland will begin accepting reservations in mid-April.
The 297-room hotel is the vision of developer David H. Hillman of Southern Management Corporation, a privately owned residential property management company. The 10-story hotel will offer 43,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, including 18 meeting rooms, two boardrooms and three ballrooms. All these spaces have been named for key figures in Maryland and university history or symbols that are important to the region. For example, one of the boardrooms will honor Orville and Wilbur Wright, who taught the first military pilots how to fly at the world’s oldest continuously operating airport, which is close by. The Terrapin Ballroom is a tribute the university’s mascot and the state’s official reptile, while the Calvert Ballroom will pay homage to the family that founded Maryland and whose descendant was the driving force behind establishing the university.
One of the hotel’s four restaurants, the Old Maryland Grill, will celebrate the foods for which the state is best known, including crabs and oysters. The Grill will be operated by Mike Franklin, who owns Franklin’s restaurant in nearby Hyattsville. Other dining venues will include Bagels ‘n Grinds and Potomac Pizza, two franchises by Adam Greenberg, whose wife is a graduate of the university, and Kapnos Taverna, created by Mike Isabella, a Washington-area chef. The hotel will also offer a 150-seat lobby bar.
Other amenities will include The Red Door Salon & Spa by Elizabeth Arden on its fourth floor, which will also house a fitness center, pool and zen garden.
Standard guestrooms will average 450 sq. ft., and the hotel will also be home to 21 studio suites, five one-bedroom suites and three executive suites including a two-story presidential suite. Besides the meeting venues on the first and second floors, the hotel will offer a penthouse loft that provides a view of the university.
The property will include an 800-space parking garage with both valet and self-park options to be used by hotel guests, restaurant patrons and visitors to the town and university.
Located on a parcel of land east of Baltimore Ave., just opposite the campus’ official visitor center, the property is also positioned along the Baltimore-Washington Corridor, 30 miles from Baltimore and 10 miles from Washington, DC. It will operate a free shuttle service to transport guests the one mile to the College Park Metro Station, which can connect them to the nation’s capital and its surrounding areas.
The Hotel at the University will be the third member of Southern Management’s hotel portfolio. It already operates The Hotel at Arundel Preserve near BWI Airport and Bear Creek Mountain Resort & Conference Center in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Its fourth property, a Cambria Suites, is also under construction in College Park, increasing the town’s hotel inventory by another 150 rooms.
According to the company, it’s anticipated that The Hotel at the University of Maryland will create nearly 500 new jobs and generate $4.4 million in state and local tax revenues each year.