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How the city’s newest hotel fit into a city block
To build the full-service Hilton Columbus Downtown on one of the Arena District’s tiniest blocks, architects and designers had a choice: make everything smaller or get creative. They chose the latter and fit 532 guest rooms, 32,000 square feet of event space, a bistro, bar and spiral staircase through space-saving tricks—such as sliding barn-style bathroom doors and windows that cut noise from adjacent cars and trains. “Our goal as a design team was to create the spaces as efficiently as possible,” says Moody Nolan project architect Greg Briya about the hotel that opened Oct. 19. “Even though we were stuck with the tight spaces, we wanted to maximize not only things within rooms but in the public spaces as well.”
F
eatures:
A skywalk connects the street-side hotel to the Greater Columbus Convention Center, a meager 105 feet away. While walking through, look up: The overhead spine supports walls, ribs, floor and traveler.
Faced with small bedroom wall spaces, designers hung art on the ceiling, embedding overhead prints from six local artists. Throughout the hotel are roughly 230 paintings, photographs and sculptures by Milton Caniff, Aminah Robinson and other area artists, says consultant Michael Reese. A 31,000-crayon cityscape by Christian Faur sits behind the front desk.
To avoid running support pillars through lower-level ballrooms, architects opted for an atrium-style design with floors wrapping an open column topped by a 15,000-square-foot skylight built to capture east and west sun. Cleaners sit in a cart that slides along steel support beams, director of sales Julia Hansen notes.
