IMEG provided engineering and design services for a new 115,000-sf, 155-key, eight-story hotel in Grand Rapids, MI, designed to Hilton Canopy Standards. The hotel also includes a full-service commercial kitchen, full-service commercial laundry, meeting spaces, and a rooftop bar.

IMEG worked closely with the owners, architect, other consultants, site design teams, hotel brand, and separate designers for food service, laundry, interior design, audio/visual, and lighting (which needed close collaboration for design coordination and drawing development) throughout the design phase. IMEG also coordinated with all stakeholders to meet varying needs, including prepping the building for future upgrade to Hilton’s connected room standards.

To meet Hilton’s Canopy Standards, which have very specific acoustical criteria, IMEG worked with the owner to evaluate mechanical systems for acoustical performance and ultimately selected a four-pipe horizontal fan coil system. Additionally, the hotel is located in a larger development that also had separate, on-going projects at the time: a movie theater to the west and a two-story event space to the north, with a portion of the guestrooms in the hotel located above the event space. Design teams for all three projects collaborated closely to coordinate MEP systems and ensure proper acoustical performance.

The hotel’s sustainable design features include high-efficiency condensing boilers and water heaters to provide efficient heating and domestic hot water production for the entire building; a dedicated outdoor air unit using energy recovery to help manage peak cooling and dehumidification of ventilation air; a centralized guestroom energy management system that enables automatic occupancy control of guestrooms and thermostat setback when a room is unoccupied; and the use of LED lighting throughout.