BETHESDA'S MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL

TO OPEN

WORLD'S TALLEST HOTEL

IN 2012 -

BUT WHY NOT IN

BETHESDA?

Exciting news from Marriott International headquarters here in Bethesda. The company will have the world's tallest hotel when the J.W. Marriott Marquis Dubai opens its doors late in 2012.

1,164 feet tall, the hotel will be only 85 ft. shorter than the Empire State Building!

With 1608 rooms, 9 restaurants, 5 entertainment venues and lounges, 2 ballrooms, 24 meeting rooms, 16,000 sq. ft. Saray Spa, 7th floor pool deck with 32m pool and private cabanas, and convention capacity for up to 1,000 attendees... ...when can I make a reservation?

Restaurant choices include Prime 68 Steakhouse, Atul Kochar's Rang Mahal Indian restaurant (and restaurant name of the year!), Positano Italian restaurant, a to-be-named Arabic restaurant (this sounds the most interesting), and boulangerie La Farine, which Marriott promises will be a social "meeting spot."

With billions of business travelers within 5 flight hours of Dubai, there will be a lot of people to meet. And live music nightly.

The Marquis designation is rarely given by Marriott. In fact, the only other Marriott so branded is in Miami. It signifies "scale, grandeur and location."

They couldn't have picked a better place. Dubai may be the most impressive city in the world today in terms of architecture. It is one of the very few places in the world that has at least attempted to match design with our advanced year in time - 2012 A.D.

My only question is, why can't we do this in Bethesda? Certainly we have a shortage of hotel rooms in town.

Besides the oft-imitated Bethesda Row, there are very few impressive buildings in town. I would count the Gothamesque Capital One building, the Newlands Building, the Bethesda Metro Center buildings, and the various Nathan Landau properties among the successes downtown.

We shouldn't just be reaching for the sky in height, but in design and materials, as well. Give me steel and glass any day over these cookie-cutter, short colored-brick boxes. Brick is perfect for houses, but not for modern, urban architecture.

So many of the buildings now in development have boring designs, and are a waste of valuable land with their heights topping out far below what could and should be built.

I still oppose the urbanization of the parts of Bethesda outside the downtown. It's curious that developers and the politicians they get elected are intent on doing so. Urbanizing a suburban county, including building a city in the middle of the country (Science City), is the definition of sprawl. There seems to be an emphasis on the number of developments, rather than the "density" so often talked about.

Can't we do what a few in Bethesda - and many in Dubai - have done: push the design and height envelopes?

I'm looking forward to the new Westin Bethesda hotel, but it won't be a tower. It would be great if Marriott took the lead in its hometown, and gave us a J.W. Marriott Marquis Bethesda.