The hotel, which also has a restaurant, lounge and upto 20,000-sf of meeting space, will be managed byRadisson Corp., one of four hotel brands in theMinnetonka, MN-based Carlson Cos. Once it undergoes amajor renovation project, the hotel will be renamed the RadissonHotel Richardson. The conversion is expected to becompleted by the end of the first quarter of 2001.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The hotel's main potential is in its location in oneof the fastest growing sections of the Dallas-FortWorth area, a section which has been dubbed "theTelecom Corridor," says Eric Danziger, chairman ofRadisson-Olympus Capital Partners and president andchief operating officer of Carlson Hotels Worldwide.The high concentration of telecommunications serviceswill also be a nice fit to serve thetelecommunications needs of Carlson's reservationsdelivery systems, global customer base andsister-companies Carlson Wagonlit Travel and CarlsonMarketing Group, Danizger says.

The first priority for the alliance, formed thissummer, is to buy hotels for conversion and managementunder Carlson's Radisson and Regent InternationalHotel brands. The partnership pairs Olympus'investment and corporate development expertise withCarlson's skills in global hotel and travel industrybrand building.Radisson-Olympus is hunting for full-service hotelproperties in the top 25 or so major metropolitanmarkets, with a particular bent toward buying,renovating and converting hotels in the mid-markethotel segment where often they are "under managed andunder branded."