Westin Hotel May Be Coming to Bethesda

 A Westin hotel may be coming to Bethesda in coming years.

Gregory Rooney, vice president of development for the Bernstein Companies, tells Patch the company is gearing up to file plans with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to seek approval to build the hotel and an office building on the site of the current Bethesda Court Hotel at 7740 Wisconsin Avenue.

The Bernstein Companies controls the Bethesda Court Hotel site and has partnered with the owners of surrounding properties on the project, Rooney said. The project would be housed on nearly two-acre site that includes the Connor Building at 7720 Wisconsin Avenue, which houses the and several parking lots.

The and thewould not be affected by the new development, Rooney said.

Both buildings could be as high as 143 feet, Rooney said. Tentative plans, still subject to approval by Park and Planning, call for the Westin to be a full-service hotel with a ballroom and 203 rooms. The office building is planned to be about 250,000 square feet. Both buildings would house ground-floor retail – about 20-25,000 square feet in total, Rooney said – and a pedestrian pass-through and plaza would connect Wisconsin and Woodmont Avenues, and the Woodmont Triangle with the Bethesda Metro.

“We’re thinking this will be sort of a path people who live in the Woodmont Triangle use, to cut through our property to get to the Metro,” Rooney said.

Several residential projects are planned for the Woodmont Triangle, including a

Rooney said plans were expected to be filed within the next few weeks. Subject to approval, the earliest the project could come online would be 2015, Rooney said.

Rooney said he hoped the project would fill a need for hotel rooms in Bethesda, especially with the coming merger of the National Naval Medical Center with Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which will nearly double the amount of visitors to the military hospital this fall.

Stay tuned to Patch for updates on this story, including conceptual renderings of the project as they are made available.