‘Long time coming’: Titan breaks ground on hotel, food hall near Presbyterian Hospital

Titan Development has officially broken ground on a long-awaited hotel and food hall on Central Avenue.

Mayor Tim Keller and Titan partner Kurt Browning joined others Friday to celebrate the project, located across from Presbyterian Hospital. It’s a development officials say could spur recruiting efforts for health care workers.

“It’s so much bigger than a hotel or just a few places to eat,” Keller told a crowd of more than 40 public and private officials. “It’s been a long road. There’s been 20 years of stagnation that we’re pulling out of. ... This is a catalyst for this entire area.”

The hotel, a Residence Inn by Marriott, will stand five stories tall and have 126 extended-stay rooms. The food hall, dubbed Highlands Central Market, will be situated on the bottom floor and feature up to 12 food and beverage vendors.

The food hall will connect with the bottom floor of the neighboring SpringHill Suites by Marriott to the east, which Titan also developed and owns alongside Maestas Development Group, according to Matt Lammers, Titan’s vice president of development and asset management.

“I think it’s been a long time coming for an additional hotel to service this part of Albuquerque,” Browning said. “We’re excited to finally break ground and get going on construction.”

Titan expects to finish the project in late 2026. The construction phase will employ 125 people. Once open, the hotel and food hall will create roughly 40 permanent jobs, Browning said.

The hotel and food hall are part of a larger mixed-use redevelopment project called The Highlands.

The Highlands encompass five blocks — situated between Oak NE and Sycamore NE, primarily along Central — that Titan acquired roughly 19 years ago, according to Browning.

In the late 2010s, Titan developed the Highlands Master Plan, a conceptual blueprint of uses and projects for the five blocks, Browning said. Projects that Titan has completed in The Highlands include the SpringHill Suites by Marriott and the Olympus Highlands North apartments.

Following the development of the new hotel and food hall, two of the five blocks will be fully developed, and the remaining blocks will welcome retail, restaurant, multifamily and potentially medical office uses, Browning said.

Titan currently owns four of the five blocks after selling the site where Olympus Highlands North resides, Browning said.

The vacant land set to welcome the new hotel and food hall was formerly occupied by blighted single-family residential housing, a news release said. After removing the housing, Titan implemented “extensive infrastructure upgrades,” which Browning said was a major challenge.

“It was an older part of town. It took years for us to just tee up the infrastructure. ... Some of (it) was built in 1900, 1905,” Browning said. “It took significant time, money and effort to get these five blocks to where you could actually develop something.”

Browning declined to share the cost of the project. But it will benefit from a metropolitan redevelopment abatement, which the city approved last year and will provide seven years of tax breaks, said city Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Director Terry Brunner.

The Highlands Central Market will be Titan’s first food hall and will connect to the Presbyterian Hospital via an existing sky bridge. Browning said Titan is in negotiations with several local vendors for the food hall.

City Councilor Nichole Rogers, also at the groundbreaking, said the project will have positive implications for the city’s health care sector.

“We have a lot of (traveling nurses) in our hospitals,” Rogers said. “It helps us to be able to recruit them for those contracts if they have a vibrant environment around the hospital for them to also enjoy when they’re off duty.”

Brunner said it’s exciting to see long-awaited progress in the area.

“This is a great amenity for people (who) have loved ones who are receiving care at Presbyterian,” Brunner said. “It’s also going to draw people in to stay in the area, which helps the local restaurants and retail businesses.”