Joe's Crab Shack Coming to Downtown Newark

Downtown Newark's first hotel in four decades is getting quite the crabby guest.

Popular seafood restaurant Joe's Crab Shack will soon call the city home at the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel, which celebrated its grand opening Tuesday evening.

The restaurant will occupy nearly 5,400 of 14,000 total square feet of retail space on the ground floor level of the Broad Street hotel. The remainder of the retail space has yet to be filled.

The Marriott, five years in the making, officially opened its doors in late September. It has 150 guest rooms, 10 suites and 4,100 square feet of meeting space, including four meeting rooms and two board rooms. Guests can grab breakfast and dinner at the on-site bistro and drinks at the evening bars.

"The whole point of the new Courtyard by Marriott lobby is to be inviting," said the hotel's General Manager Nicholas Pappagallo of the spacious area, complete with televisions, comfortable seating and "media pods" for office work.

Newark Councilwoman Mildred Crump, flanked Tuesday by Councilmen Anibal Ramos, Carlos Gonzalez and Luis Quintana, joked about booking her bridge tournaments at the posh hotel.

The new hotel, located just steps away from the Prudential Center, sits on a corner once representative of the city's economic plight.

"What we're seeing now is this location, which used to be a symbol of pain, of betrayal, of failed promises, we now see it becoming a symbol of breaking a generation-long trend," said Mayor Cory Booker. "The first hotel in our downtown in 40 years."