By Bilyana Dimitrova
Omni reflects gracious town
The Omni Richmond Hotel is also located in Shockoe Slip, an old, restored section of town full of offices and restaurants, downhill from the white, Thomas Jefferson-designed Capitol. Tours of the recently renovated statehouse leave every hour on the hour.
Omnis tend to reflect their surroundings, and this one exudes the grace of this Southern city.
The hotel’s dark-wood Magnolia Room, off the lobby, has a foyer, an anteroom with blue-and-white china in cabinets and a 30-person meeting room with tray ceilings and an alcove for lunch and breaks.
It is often used for opening-night receptions, said LauranDangler, director of group sales.
The Omni’s main conference center is on the second floor of the hotel. Three meeting rooms for 50 and a boardroom for 10 open onto a 1,000-square-foot balcony that overlooks the sky-lighted atrium of three office towers known as the James Center.
Its meeting spaces include a 7,000-square-foot ballroom and the 2,200-square-foot Potomac Room, with windows that overlook the city.
On the hotel’s 19th floor, a boardroom for 14 overlooks even more of the city; meeting attendees can stay in guest rooms nearby.
Across the street from the Omni, the four-story Tobacco Company, in a beautifully restored warehouse, uses its top-floor garden atrium for dinners for up to 160 guests. The first-floor Victorian Lounge, with furniture upholstered in cheetah velvet, is perfect for receptions for 30 to 50 people.
Grand dames reign for special events
Two elegant and historic downtown venues also offer meeting and event space for special occasions.
The John Marshall Hotel opened in 1929, the day after the stock market crashed. Back then, it was Virginia’s largest hotel, and among its guests were Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter.
It sat empty for 20 years, until new owners brought it back in 2011, this time as an apartment building. They opted to preserve its ballroom, suitable for events for as many as 500 people. Its split staircase makes for grand entrances; a vaulted ceiling and wraparound balcony add distinctiveness. A smaller ballroom has three walls of 30-foot-tall windows.
Richmond’s only Forbes Five Star, AAA Five-Diamond hotel is the magnificent Jefferson Hotel, one of only 27 hotels in the country with that dual distinction. First opened in 1895, the hotel burned in 1901 and was rebuilt. Last renovated in 2000, the property has 264 guest rooms and 18 meeting rooms.
Twelve presidents have slept there, not surprising given Forbes magazine’s 2001 declaration that the Jefferson was the “Best Hotel in America.”
Rachmaninoff played in its 4,500-square-foot Grand Ballroom. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a Richmond native, was discovered while waiting on tables in the dining room. Until 1948, the hotel kept alligators in its Palm Court’s marble pools.
Richmond remembers its past
Richmond was known long before its stellar hotel opened, however. The city was the capital of the Confederacy. One fourth of all the battles in the Civil War and 60 percent of the casualties took place within 75 miles of the city.
Along its Monument Avenue, Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson are immortalized in sculpture. A monument to Arthur Ashe, a Richmond native and international tennis star, was added in 1996.
“Richmond became the capital mainly because of the railroads,” said Maureen Egan, who has written “The Insiders’ Guide to Richmond” and leads food tours that also feed tidbits of history and about Richmond today. “It also did the most manufacturing of any Southern city.”
