 Designed by Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, the eighteen-story building with a green tile pitched roof and 1,100 rooms was conceived by McCarthy as a city-sized hotel scaled for conventions with a resort atmosphere.The hotel was located in a suburban area three miles (5 km) southwest of downtown Houston at the acute southwest corner of Main Street and Bellaire Boulevard (West Holcombe Boulevard after 1963).At the time, this was on the fringes of countryside and was meant to be the first phase of a much larger indoor shopping and entertainment complex called McCarthy Center, anchored alongside the planned Texas Medical Center.