Photos: Downtown’s latest hotel addition is beginning to rise up

A Hyatt-branded project that’s replacing downtown parking lots with 11 stories of lodging and retail storefronts on two streets is beginning to materialize.

Reps with Hyatt Place Centennial Park, a joint venture between Hyatt and affiliates of Atlanta developer Songy Highroads, sent a construction update this week for a 175-key Luckie Street lodge that couldn’t be much closer to the Georgia Aquarium.

The project, which has reached the fifth floor of construction, wiped out surface parking and a two-story midcentury building that most recently served as a school.

Plans call for an August 2019 debut, months before the aquarium’s $100 million shark-exhibit expansion is expected to wrap.

Renderings: SongyHighroads.com; architect: Wakefield Beasley.

Beyond hotel rooms, 2,100 square feet of meeting space, and a pool, the project will feature retail spaces facing Luckie and Marietta streets, officials said this week.

Songy Highroads and Hyatt acquired the needed land late last year and closed on a $32.9 million construction loan in March. It marks the partnership’s sixth Hyatt-branded build since 2014.

Google Maps; February 2018

The Hyatt project joins three other lodges in the works or recently finished within a few blocks. A sky-scraping Georgia World Congress Center hotel that would overlook Mercedes Benz Stadium is also in the pipeline. A few years ago, a Hyatt House was built a block away

Centennial Olympic Park, about a block south of the upcoming hotel, is undergoing a $17 million expansion project.

Below, find aerial photographs of construction progress taken just before Halloween.