Jackson spoke after a fire broke out at the construction site Thursday. The fire damage was confined to building material and did not damage the structure of the building, Jackson says. No one was hurt in the blaze.
But, Jackson says the previous timeline set as the target date for completion was abandoned after the project's initial developer, a subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark Corp., pulled out of the project.
"We're hoping to have a major portion of the hotel built--not all of it--by the Super Bowl in 2006," Jackson says. He adds the city hopes the public areas in the hotel will be complete by the time of the Super Bowl and that some rooms will be ready.
Since Kimberly-Clark left the project in January, Cleveland-based Ferchill Group has been named as the developer of the hotel, which is to be turned into an upscale Westin Hotel. The 33-story Book-Cadillac opened in 1924. It closed in 1984 and has been vacant since. City officials have been hopeful a developer can restore the building into 450 to 470 hotel rooms and 70 to 80 apartments.
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