But city officials turned down this request, saying there was significant risk it would not produce the tax revenue to make the TIF financially viable.

Williams said a decision on a proposal would be made by the end of the year, and left open the possibility that the city would subsidize the hotel's financing.

City officials said they intended to ask the Council for legislation to establish a nonprofit to sell TIF bonds and own the hotel.

Critics such as Charles W. McMillion, chief economist at the business consulting firm MBG Information Services, argued that the convention headquarters hotel would lead to lower sales tax revenue by reducing pressure on hotel room rates throughout the city and by keeping attendees away from local restaurants and retail businesses.

City officials countered by pointing to the two studies conducted in 2000 which came to different conclusions, and by noting that the convention center had promised those booking large meetings at the site that a headquarters hotel would be open by 2007.

On December 16, 2003, the mayor's office finally asked the Council to establish a nonprofit entity authorized to issue tax-exempt bonds and borrow $1 billion.

Joe Sternlieb, head of the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District; James A. Jemison, mayoral planning aide; and city development consultant Ron Kaplan met for two to three hours a day, three times a week, with council staff and offered to agree to a hotel and some meeting space so long as the council approved the deal by late June.

On December 3, the WCSA board voted in favor of the Williams site, but said it would continue to study placing a hotel somewhere on New York Avenue NW.

[20] But Cropp convinced the council to put off the vote, arguing that the bill still gave the mayor absolute discretion over where to build a convention headquarters hotel.

[21] Williams submitted a revised agreement on May 24, and the council unanimously approved a plan to redevelop the old convention center site on June 6, 2005.

[22] The agreement said that 120,000 square feet (11,000 m2) of land on the northeast corner of the old convention center site would remain undeveloped pending council resolution of what to do with the property.

To prevent the Lubert-Adler purchase, WCSA placed a $900,000 deposit on the Pipefitters' property, and pledged that the historic building would be incorporated into the new hotel rather than demolished.

But at some point between October 2002 and January 2006, it became clear that private financing for the convention headquarters hotel could not be obtained with so many property owners.

The city declined to get involved in operation of the hotel, and advised Gould to negotiate with Marriott about parking garage management.

[30] In February 2006, Mayor Williams resubmitted to the city council his three-year-old proposal for public financing the convention headquarters hotel.

WCSA would use its own bond sales to pay $187 million of the hotel's construction costs, with the remainder to be privately financed by Marriott and RLJ Development.

To ensure that construction began by 2008, the legislation also contained eminent domain language allowing the city to obtain title to two small properties within the parcel which it had not yet acquired.

Reviewing these developments, Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio concluded that "Putting in a hotel is no guarantee that it will improve the [Walter E. Washington Convention Center's] performance.

Even though the city had not issued any approval for alley closures, historic building preservation, excavations down to 80 feet (24 m) below ground, or zoning changes, the addition of private equity investment in the hotel was considered a positive sign.

At that time, Marriott agreed to let the city build this meeting center on part of Marriott-owned land just north of the convention headquarters hotel site.

Shortly after the request for more public funding, District asked Marriott to cut the cost of the facility by reducing the number of rooms to about 1,000.

Marriott released details about the hotel's ongoing design effort in October 2008, more than a year after the structure's specifications had been agreed to by the city.

A subsidiary of JBG Smith, Wardman Investor LLC, filed a notice with the city's Contract Appeals Board in early 2009 to have the entire project set aside for being an "invalid sole source procurement".

Even if the company did have standing, the appeals board said, it lost the right to protest after the council passed legislation removing the project from the regular contracting process in 2006.

[53] On March 29, 2010, D.C. Superior Court Judge Natalia Combs Greene granted partial summary judgment and a motion to dismiss to Marriott, the city, and WCSA.

A partial out-of-court settlement had already been reached by the parties giving JBG Cos. some limited ability to move forward on the condo project, but that agreement now seemed unnecessary given the court's ruling.

To get the project restarted, WCSA said it would release its $22 million grant to Marriott and its partners by the end of August 2010 so that ground preparation could begin immediately.

Construction was expected to take a full year longer than usual due to the deep excavation needed for the underground levels and the connecting tunnel with the convention center.

Hensel Phelps also claimed that Cooper Carry failed to perform its work in a timely manner, forcing the contractor to miss deadlines, and violated basic "standard of care" obligations.

[87] In March 2017, Cvent, an event management company, ranked the Washington Marriott Marquis 72nd in its annual list of the top U.S. hotels for meetings.