Marriott opens $35M Montco hotel

Doors opened in September at the new $35 million Marriott Courtyard hotel in Kulpsville, at the heart of the new development spreading from the Lansdale exit off the North-South Pennsylvania Turnpike that is turning Towamencin Township into a Montgomery County corporate center alongside King of Prussia and Plymouth Meeting. Formal opening festivities are tonight, says developer Mark Nicoletti. The hotel sits on the site of a former Days Inn and a predecessor motel where Nicoletti worked while a Villanova student, on land his father started assembling when the turnpike came through in the 1950s.

Nicoletti, head of Philadelphia Suburban Development Corp., says the hotel "has a great restaurant, The Porch, a Starbucks cafe, and a large conference-banquet center, The Forum." He and Marriott expect it will be a hub for the local corporate community, which includes SKF (ball bearings), Hatfield (sausages) and other food businesses, and Merck and Almac and other drugmakers on the road from Philadelphia to Allentown and points north.