Rendering via Carpenter & Co.

The highly anticipated and long-awaited selection for the developer of the World Trade Center is finally over: the city has selected Carpenter and Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts and New Orleans-based Woodward Interests to develop a $364 million Four Seasons hotel and residences at the World Trade Center site.

A committee hand-picked by Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Tuesday (March 24, 2015) selected the Four Seasons’ team among five finalists competing for a 99-year lease.   You can read the five finalists plans here.

The Carpenter/Woodward team plans to redevelop the building into a 350 room Four Seasons with 76 hotel-serviced condos.  Their plan also calls for adding to new construction wings on either side of the building.

The Four Seasons team offered a $5 million deposit, annual rent of $3.25 million for the first 10 years, $3.75 million for the next 10 years, and then rent increases with inflation.   The city calculated the fixed rent offered by Carpenter to be the highest of all proposals at $400 million.

Another thing that seemed to sway the city panel: the Four Seasons plan included spending between $95 million and $130 million more than their competitors on construction, theoretically creating a higher end project with more jobs.

The Carpenter team also has plans for a tourist attraction called “New Orleans: History at the Confluence of Cultures,” which would be developed with Harvard University professor of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Tulane University history professor Lawrence Powell.

For next steps, the New Orleans Building Corp. meets on March 31 to approve a lease, then the lease goes to the City Council for a final approval.

For more info, Nola.com has a pretty good overview of the entire Four Seasons’ proposal here.