Hotel exec calls site fitting for 1st Westin

An executive for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide said Thursday that Huntsville's World Famous Bridge Street project is a fitting place in which to build Alabama's first Westin hotel.

"It was a combination of Huntsville and Bridge Street that allowed this to happen for us," said Jim Alderman, vice president of Starwood, which owns and operates Westin Hotels & Resorts. Alderman was in Huntsville to announce that Starwood had completed an agreement with O&S Holdings LLC to operate the 200-room hotel and 8,000-square-foot conference center in Huntsville. The announcement was made in a fifth-floor conference room at Adtran Inc., which looks out to the Bridge Street site.

Forty privately owned condominiums will be located on the top five floors of the 12-story complex, and owners will be able to take advantage of the Westin's amenities, like an indoor-outdoor pool, spa and health club.

O&S Holdings is the developer of the $210-million Bridge Street, a 100-acre center with shops, restaurants, office buildings and apartments in Cummings Research Park.

The Westin Huntsville is expected to open in fall 2006.

"What you're doing here with Bridge Street and the announcement of the Westin Hotel is not only important to Huntsville but the entire state," said Neal Wade, the director of the Alabama Development Office. "This is going to put Huntsville in a new echelon of hospitality."

Gary Safady, managing partner of Los Angeles-based O&S Holdings, said Westin Hotels & Resorts has been ranked the No. 1 upscale hotel for three years in a row in Business Travel News' annual U.S. hotel chain survey.