STAMFORD, CT-Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. has opened a new Sheraton-branded hotel in Stamford, CT. Located in the city’s CBD, at 700 E. Main St., the 379-key Sheraton Stamford Hotel has 13,000 square feet of event and corporate meeting space.

Affiliates of RockBridge Capital, LLC and Davidson Hotels & Resorts, which own the property in a joint venture, recently completed $3 million in renovations to convert the hotel, previously a Holiday Inn, to the Sheraton brand. The lobby, fitness facility and meeting spaces were extensively renovated, while other Sheraton-specific amenities were added, according to John Belden, president and CEO of Davidson Hotels & Resorts.

“We wanted to take the property more up-scale and connect with some of the more Fortune 100-type companies that are in the area,” Belden tells GlobeSt.com. He adds that the recent update follows another $20 million in renovations conducted three and a half years ago.

Belden says the decision to convert to the Sheraton brand from Holiday Inn stemmed from a desire to attract guests associated with Stamford’s high-end firms. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS Financial Services, Deloitte, General Electric and McKinsey & Co. all have offices within five miles of the Sheraton Stamford. “Groups that, again, associate more with an upscale scale brand like Sheraton,” Belden says, noting that the Sheraton Stamford is the city’s second full-service hotel after the Stamford Marriott Hotel and Spa.

The opening comes amid a recent spike in the value of full-service hotels. US sales of the properties increased 180%, to $3.2 billion in the first quarter of 2011, as the number of properties sold rose just 61%, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. Starwood expects to add more than 60 new Sheraton hotels globally over the next three years, with 40 of those planned for China, according to a Starwood spokesperson.