Nearly four years after the only hotel in Connecticut’s biggest city shut down, developers broke ground on a 142-room Marriott Residence Inn as the latest phase of the ambitious Steelpointe Harbor project on Bridgeport’s waterfront.
As steelworkers and carpenters worked on part of the 420-unit apartment complex under construction nearby, business leaders gathered on a vacant lot where True North Hotel Group and RCI Group plan to build the six-story hotel over the 15 months.
“Bringing a brand like Marriott is fitting. Only the best for Bridgeport,” said Bobby Christoph Jr., the chief developer of Steelpointe Harbor and president of RCI Group.
The more than 1,000 apartments planned on the 2.8-million-square-foot Steelpointe peninsula are the heart of the mixed-use project, a decade-old initiative to revive a largely ignored stretch of the state’s poorest city. New restaurants, stores, a busy boatworks and a marina are also key components, but the hotel long seemed to most aspirational.
A worker at The August, a new mixed-use complex being completed alongside the site of the planned Residence Inn by Marriott in Bridgeport. (Don Stacom/The Hartford Courant)
Downtown Bridgeport was home to several once-proud hotels from its industrial heyday, but they’d mostly been abandoned, razed or turned into low-income apartments between the 1950s and 1980s. The only new initiative was a nine-story Holiday Inn that was erected in the 1980s; officials at the time portrayed it as the key to an economic turnarouned for the city.
But its revenue slumped as the wider downtown revival never panned out, and the Holiday Inn was already marginal by the time the pandemic hit. The hotel shut down in early 2022 and has been remodeled as apartments.
A worker at The August, a new mixed-use complex being completed alongside the site of the planned Residence Inn by Marriott in Bridgeport. (Don Stacom/The Hartford Courant)
City and business leaders see a far different outcome with the Residence Inn by Marriott, largely because it will be in the heart of an all-new mixed-use mega-development.
“With the harbor and the marina here, it’s a natural fit to have a hotel. The low-hanging fruit for us is that the largest city in Connecticut didn’t have a hotel,” said Dan Onofrio, president of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council.
The hotel developers are expecting roughly 30% of guests will want extended stays, ranging from families of patients at the St. Vincent’s or Bridgeport hospitals, parents of students at Fairfield University or other colleges, and business travelers working with MT Bank or other prominent employers.
“With the ampitheater there are thousands of people coming every summer to music shows, you have the Klein Memorial theatre, the Downtown Cabaret. People don’t realize the breadth of the arts sector here. And don’t forget, we have the state’s only zoo, the Beardsley.”
The Residence Inn groundbreaking comes 10 years after the sprawling Steelpointe project kicked off with the opening of a 150,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops outlet. It has added a Chipotle, Starbucks and T Mobile, and Mobil plans a large gas station with car wash.
A rendering of the Residence Inn by Marriott in Bridgeport at night. (Courtesy of True North Hotel Group)
More retail is expected as part of the influx of new apartments, which are chiefly billed as waterview units leasing at market rates. The August will open with about 420 studio, one- and two-bedroom units are expected in the first wave, with a small number of three-bedroom models. At least 600 more are planned in future stages.
Renderings show an outdoor pool, pickleball courts and a large landscaped deck, all overlooking the Long Island Sound. There will also be a fitness center and yoga studio, along with two outdoor courtyards.
The first apartments are expected to open in January, and the hotel completion is scheduled for early 2027.
