NORMAL - The Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in uptown Normal won't be open for guests until next summer but the building celebrated a construction milestone Friday. | Video | Photo gallery

A crane lifted a ceremonial last piece of steel onto the roof of the nine-story, 230-room hotel.

"This signifies a milestone in the building of a hotel," said Mayor Chris Koos.

The "topping out" ceremony is one of the construction industry's oldest customs, said Brian Rumpf, senior project manager for general contractors Core Construction. The idea originated in early Europe when people put a tree branch on top of a finished house to let the tree spirit know they appreciated the use of the wood from the forest.

"The American flag is our own little stamp on it," said Rumpf. The beam is a memorial to all the men and women who helped build the building.

"This has been such an exciting project to watch," said Koos. "It will bring a lot of new people and a lot of vitality to uptown."

Koos estimates the hotel will bring about 90,000 visitors each year, helping both nearby Illinois State University and the town.

The hotel will be the second in Central Illinois built by Springfield, Mo., developer John Q. Hammons. Embassy Suites opened in East Peoria the first of the year.

Dave Hanning, general manager of food and beverage at Embassy Suites East Peoria, said if the success of the East Peoria hotel is any indication, the Normal hotel won't be the last one Hammons builds in Central Illinois. Hanning said the 226-suite East Peoria hotel doesn't have enough rooms to accommodate the demand.

The road to building the Normal hotel hasn't been entirely smooth. Hammons originally expected to open a $30 million Marriott hotel by February 2007. That was pushed back when the town faced an eminent domain trial to get some of the land for the project, which is bordered by Fell Avenue on the west, North Street on the north, Broadway on the east and Beaufort Street on the south.

In the meantime, the cost of building materials skyrocketed and so did bids for the project. Hammons' share of the project jumped to $51.5 million; the town will contribute $2.5 million for the hotel, $10 million for the conference center and $8.3 million for the parking deck.

When the project got underway in March 2007, it ran into another snag when the concrete support piers for the hotel failed pressure tests. A different type of support had to be used, which tacked another $2.1 million to the project, said Uptown Development Director Wayne Aldrich.

Former Councilman Parker Lawlis, whose legacy is his fight against the original idea of a town-owned hotel, said he is excited that somebody else built the hotel. "It saved an initial $17 million," he said citing the amount the town expected to pay to build a town-owned hotel.