RNC Update: Hilton Cleveland Downtown

With the completion of the outer glass in December, the 32-story Hilton Cleveland Downtown is sporting an almost finished look. It couldn't come a moment too soon for the $276 million project. Turner Construction workers are now sheltered from the biting Lake Erie wind, which whipped a construction crane into the building in mid-November. Over the next two months it will start to look like an actual hotel as plumbing, fixtures and furniture make their way into the 600 guest rooms — many of them reserved by the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee for the July 18-21 Republican National Convention. "It's like a waterfall up the building," says Jeffrey Appelbaum, an attorney managing the project on behalf of Cuyahoga County. "At various levels of the building, they're at various levels [of completion]." The project is on budget and on time for a June 1 opening. Inside the 90-foot-tall lower podium, kitchen equipment is already being installed in the Burnham hotel restaurant, named for Daniel Burnham, the designer of the 1903 Group Plan. "This building is built to honor the Burnham plan," says Appelbaum. "He was the great inspiration for it."