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Washington, D.C., July 11, 2007… Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty today joined city and business leaders to break ground for the first hotel in the NoMA (North of Massachusetts Avenue) Business Improvement District. A 218-key Courtyard by Marriott, located strategically between the New York Avenue Metro station and the new headquarters of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), will be the District’s first majority Hispanic-owned hotel.The majority owner is Robert Finvarb, a Georgetown University Law Center alumnus and CEO of The Finvarb Group, which owns three hotels and is developing four others. Co-owners are local investors Dave Wilmot of Harmon, Wilmot, Brown & Bagwell, LLP, Craig Welburn of Welburn Hospitality, Thomas Hopkins, and Dr. Barron Harvey. The team has participated in Marriott’s Diversity Ownership Initiative, launched in 2005 with the goal of having 500 minority- and woman-owned Marriott hotels by 2010. To date, Marriott has nearly attained its goal, with over 400 such hotels, including 30 open or under development in the Washington-Baltimore area.

The Courtyard by Marriott’s eight-story, 160,000 square foot structure will include 10,000 square feet of ground-level retail space, including at least one café with outdoor seating. An elevator will provide direct access from the plaza between the hotel and the Metro station entrance to the elevated Metropolitan Branch bicycle and pedestrian trail adjacent to the Metro track. A green roof will reduce the hotel’s energy consumption and storm water runoff.

“This Courtyard by Marriott is the first of six groundbreakings we expect before the end of the year in the NoMA BID,” said Elizabeth Price, President of the NoMA BID. “Soon there will be 2.5 million square feet of new apartments, offices, retail space, and hotels under construction in this rapidly emerging neighborhood. This new Courtyard by Marriott is particularly important because it brings lodging and retail amenities to NoMA that will support our office tenants.”

The NoMA BID is bounded generally by Massachusetts Avenue on the south, North Capitol Street on the west, and Q and R Streets on the north; it also extends eastward just beyond the CSX/Metrorail tracks. Centrally located within the BID is the New York Avenue Metro Station, situated near the new ATF headquarters building. The BID’s office is at One NoMa Station, 131 M Street, N.E. Private developers are investing more than $1 billion this year with plans to develop over 20 million square feet of office, residential, hotel, and retail space in the 35-block area covered by the NoMA BID over the next 20 years. For more information about the BID, including a map, see the BID Website at http://nomabid.wpengine.com.

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