The development, which carried an original price tag of $2 billion, will now offer approximately 3,000 guest suites. The additional cost for the new lodging facilities has not yet been revealed.

Sited on a 350-acre parcel along the Potomac River, National Harbor will feature 2,500 residential units, one million sf of class A retail space and 500,000 sf of office space in addition to the hotel offerings. Originally, it was the Gaylord National Hotel Resort and Convention Center--currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2008--that was to provide the lodging accommodations, with 2,000 guestrooms. Now National Harbor will also have a 246-unit Fairfield Resorts timeshare property, a Hampton Inn, a Residence Inn by Marriott, a 195-room Westin Hotel and Resorts and a W aloft Hotel.

"This is an unprecedented, blockbuster project that we have in National Harbor," Johnson says. "It is literally changing the face of Prince George's County, the State of Maryland and the Washington Region. It is going to change the way people from all over the world visit the Nation's Capital."