PM Hospitality Opens First Westin in Delaware

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Wilmington, Delaware’s skyline is altered and its stature gets a boost with the opening of The Westin Wilmington. The brand new 180-room hotel, developed by a joint venture consisting of Buccini/Pollin Group and Westport Capital and managed by PM Hospitality Services, marks the debut of the Westin brand in the State of Delaware.

Carrying the address of 818 Shipyard Dr., the Westin Wilmington signifies a key move in the ongoing revitalization of the city’s Riverfront district. In addition to the usual four-star hotel trappings, the 10-story, LEED Silver-certified property features a 2,100-square-foot state-of-the-art legal center designed specifically to accommodate legal teams involved in proceedings at the nearby federal courthouse.  The building’s 4,600 square feet of meeting space combines with the 87,000 square feet of meeting space at the adjoining Chase Center on the Riverfront, the largest special-events facility in the Brandywine Valley, to create a prominent hotel/convention center complex.

“With the opening of this four-star hotel, Wilmington and the Chase Center are well positioned to be major players in the meetings and convention industry in the Mid-Atlantic region,” Joseph Bojanowski, president of PMHS, said in a prepared statement. The property is also within walking distance of some of the country’s leading Fortune 500 companies, including Barclay’s, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One and DuPont. Additionally, it has the added benefit of being located just 25 minutes outside of Philadelphia, and halfway between New York City and Washington, D.C.

However, it’s not all business at the Westin Wilmington; the hotel is going after the leisure set, too.

“The transformation of a once-vacant industrial warehouse shipyard along the Riverfront into a leisure destination has made great strides over the years,” according to a report by hospitality consulting firm HVS. “The Riverfront’s variety of commercial and residential uses spans office buildings, multi-family housing, restaurant and retail venues, and several of the area’s larger entertainment venues, including Frawley Stadium and the Chase Center. The state-of-the-art Penn Cinema Riverfront & IMAX complex, which opened in December of 2012, is estimated to bring an additional 700,000 visitors to the Riverfront annually—an encouraging forecast for hotel demand in coming years.”

Indeed, there are other hotels coming to Wilmington, but the Westin holds the distinction of being the first new-build hotel in the city since 1980.