The Century Center Hotel: The Marriott That Became the DoubleTree

The Marriott decades · DoubleTree from 5 August 2011

Lead: When Century Center opened in 1977 on the riverfront — the Philip Johnson and John Burgee convention complex told in the Architecture account — a full-service hotel rose beside it at 123 North St. Joseph Street (today 123 North Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard), a ten-story house tied to the center by an enclosed skywalk and sharing an atrium with the Helmut Jahn office building at 100 North Michigan, built in 1982 in the broker's record; the Tribune calls the hotel's building itself a Jahn landmark. The hotel traded for decades as the South Bend Marriott — Century Center's own current summaries still describe the connection as a skywalk to a "300-room Marriott," the count the house carried in its Marriott years. One fact is not fixed in the record reached: the hotel's own opening year as the Marriott.

The documented course resumes with its sale. The Hotel Group acquired the hotel from Host Hotels & Resorts and rebranded it a DoubleTree by Hilton on 5 August 2011, at 298 rooms in the acquisition release; a multi-million-dollar renovation followed, celebrated at a grand reopening across 14–20 May 2013 with the count at 291 rooms. United Capital Corporation bought the hotel in 2017 for $27.5 million and invested $4.4 million more in it. In October 2024 the Tribune reported a further $9.2 million overhaul proposed, with the house at 290 rooms in that account — and quoted Visit South Bend's Jeff Jarnecke on the downtown stock the house anchors: 618 hotel rooms across the DoubleTree, the Aloft, and the Courtyard. The counts are printed as their dates give them — 300 in the Marriott-era summaries, 298 at the 2011 sale, 291 at the 2013 reopening, 290 in 2024 — a slow settling of the same house's measure, not four different hotels.

Sources:

1. Century Center, the center's own published summaries (opened 1977; the skywalk to the 300-room hotel).
2. The Hotel Group, acquisition and grand-reopening releases, August 2011 and May 2013 (298 rooms; the DoubleTree rebranding of 5 August 2011; 291 rooms at the reopening).
3. South Bend Tribune, October 2024 (the 2017 United Capital purchase at $27.5 million and $4.4 million invested; the proposed $9.2 million overhaul; 290 rooms; Jarnecke's 618 downtown rooms).
4. Broker's offering record for 100 North Michigan Street (the Jahn atrium building, 1982).