A rendering of the Jonesboro Embassy Suites hotel and convention center that is set to open in December.
Remember how the Embassy Suites by Hilton and Red Wolf Convention Center on the Arkansas State University campus in Jonesboro were supposed to open in July or August?
Then in September? Then in October?
Dec. 10 is the new tentative opening date for the $58 million project, General Manager Kraig Pomrenke told Whispers. He works for O’Reilly Hospitality Management of Springfield, Missouri, which will manage the facility.
“Our update is we’re closer than we’ve ever been,” Pomrenke said. “We’re passing all of our inspections and all that good stuff. … There’s really nothing we’re waiting on. It’s just getting it all, the final pieces, put together. It’s like a big puzzle.”
He also said he’s opened seven hotels throughout his career and that the delays with this one were not unusual, given that none of them opened on the first anticipated opening date.
The initial delays could be blamed on rain affecting construction, Pomrenke said. In the later stages, it’s been a matter of coordinating subcontractors and installing all of the technology that today’s hotels require.
“In the old days, you’d build a hotel and you’d have X amount of plugs in the room and a phone jack and a cable outlet,” he said. “But now you’ve got to have all that plus USB ports, plus [internet] access points — plus, plus, plus all these other things. All that coordination just takes time, that’s all. … It’s coming together. It’s just you’re just dealing with lots of subcontractors that have other schedules and other jobs.”
The hotel will have 203 two-room suites on seven floors and feature a Houlihan’s restaurant and bar, a 24/7 fitness center, an indoor pool and an atrium.
The attached convention center will offer 40,000 SF of flexible meeting and event space for up to 1,500 people, on-site catering and audiovisual capabilities.
In addition, the university’s hospitality management students will gain hands-on experience at the facility. (See A-State’s Karen McDaniel Sees Enclave of Hospitality from Embassy for more about that.)
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