The New Orleans City Council approved a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement for the planned Omni headquarters hotel on November 5, settling the property tax treatment for the $625 million project adjacent to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The resolution, introduced by Council Vice President Matthew Willard, finalizes one of the two council votes the project still needed after the zoning advance in June.
The agreement sets a formula for payments from the development to the Orleans Parish School Board and the city’s other taxing authorities, and attaches baseline employment requirements to the incentive. The structure proposed earlier in the year called for Omni to pay its full assessed property tax bill to the School Board while making a reduced payment to the city based on the average tax rate of a group of comparable hotels.
The hotel is planned with more than 1,000 guest rooms and roughly 100,000 square feet of meeting and event space. Willard said the project will create roughly 2,500 construction jobs and 1,400 permanent positions, and that the city will collect sales tax revenue, annual PILOT payments, upfront permit fees, and proceeds from the sale of one block of John Churchill Chase Street. The new hotel at the Convention Center will transform property that currently generates no city revenue into a lasting economic asset for New Orleans, he said.
Jeffrey Schwartz, deputy mayor for community and economic development, put the expected new local tax revenue at $8 million a year. The Omni Hotel is a truly catalytic project that this administration continues to champion, and today’s vote by the Council is a major development milestone, Schwartz said.
The project cost has moved upward over its history, from $575 million when the Exhibition Hall Authority approved the development agreement and ground lease in January 2025, to $600 million at the June zoning vote, to $625 million now. The 27-story tower is planned for a state-owned parcel between Convention Center Boulevard and South Peters Street, currently home to The Sugar Mill event space, and would rise 336 feet under an overlay that exceeds existing Warehouse District height limits. TRT Holdings, Omni’s parent, will own and operate the hotel.
The incentive package drew scrutiny earlier in the process. A Bureau for Governmental Research analysis estimated total public support at $940 million over 45 years, or $669 million net, including $265 million in state sales tax exemptions. Opposition at the June hearing came from hospitality workers, neighborhood residents, and preservationists concerned about the tower’s height, the scale of the subsidies, and the loss of the 1.36-acre Mississippi Heritage Park. Groundbreaking is expected in late 2026, with opening projected for 2030.
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