Hotel Syracuse - now called the Marriott Syracuse Downtown - is open for business

Workers, politicians and others gather outside the former Hotel Syracuse on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 for the official reopening of the 92-year-old hotel at South Salina Street and East Onondaga Street. It will now be called the Marriott Syracuse Downtown.

Syracuse, N.Y. — The historic Hotel Syracuse has a new name: Marriott Syracuse Downtown.

After a two-year, $76 million restoration, the 92-year-old building reopened to the public this morning.

"We are open," Owner Ed Riley said this morning at an opening ceremony. "You can come here for lunch. You we can come here for dinner. We even serve drinks here once in a while."

Group events, such as an Onondaga Historical Association gala in June, have been held at the hotel over the past couple of months. But for the first time since the hotel closed under a previous owner in 2004, anyone will be able to walk in and get a room.

Michael George, president and chief executive officer of Crescent Hotels, the management company for the Marriott Syracuse Downtown hotel, speaks at the reopening of the former Hotel Syracuse Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. George has roots in Upstate New York: He was born in Cape Vincent and grew up in Watertown.

The hotel has 261 rooms, a Finger Lakes-style bistro named Eleven Waters, and the Cavalier Room and Barbershop bars.

Guests are greeted with a meticulously restored lobby, the hotel's magnificent Grand Ballroom, Persian Terrace ballroom and other common areas and function rooms.

"This is how it would have appeared in 1924," Riley said earlier this week.

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