Is this town big enough for all those convention center hotels?

I just have one question regarding this story about another proposed convention center hotel for downtown:

"The current convention center hotel is filling up, and Houston can attract more conventions if it had more hotel rooms in the Central Business District, and specifically, close to the George R. Brown Convention Center," Mayor Bill White said Monday.

The plan is in its early stages, with input being collected from groups that include the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city's Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department and the Houston Convention Center Hotel Corp.

"We're trying to figure out what it would cost and how it would get financed," said Richard Campo, board chairman of the hotel corporation.

The nonprofit group developed the city-owned $316 million, 1,200-room Hilton Americas-Houston convention hotel.

A possible site for a hotel would be a parcel just north of the new Discovery Green park, bordered by Rusk, Crawford, Walker and Avenida De Las Americas. The hotel would essentially mirror the Hilton Americas.

White said other sites in the area would be considered, including city-owned property.

The project, White said, would be "one of the larger hotels in Houston," with a "first-class national flag."

So what if any impact would this have on the viability of the proposed Astrodome convention hotel? The Astrodome concept is both convention center and hotel wrapped into one, so it's basically a competitor to the George R. Brown. Would the existence of another big downtown hotel whose purpose is to serve the GRB make the Dome Convention Center less viable, or would it create a midsized niche that it could fill? Or is this all a sign that nobody thinks the Dome hotel is ever going to get off the ground?

Theoretically, Commissioners Court is supposed to vote sometime soon on the Dome Convention Center concept, so perhaps that will tell me what I need to know. So we'll see.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 23, 2008 to Elsewhere in Houston