Above: Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla at the construction site

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Puerto Rico is in the midst of a Hyatt boom.

Just weeks after the opening of the new Hyatt House in San Juan, the Hyatt Place San Juan is under construction.

The hotel will add 149 rooms to San Juan’s burgeoning Convention District and could create around 420 jobs during construction, according to Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla.

The project will take around 17 months, with approximately 130 permanent direct and indirect jobs expected when the hotel opens.

The Hyatt House is also located in San Juan’s Convention District, one of several new Hyatt hotels to have opened their doors in recent years, including the Hyatt Place Bayamon and the Hyatt Place Manati.

The project is involving a $29.7 million investment, the Governor said.

It is a partnership between Island Hospitality Partners and and affiliate of Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

Around 20 percent of the project is being financed by the Tourism Development Fund, a subsidiary of the Government Development Bank.

The Convention District is steadily expanding, Garcia Padilla said, with the construction of a modern 200,000-square-foot office complex on the way and another 32,000 square feet of retail space on stream.