Downtown San Diego is getting ready to embrace the newest hotel on the block: Hotel Indigo San Diego, scheduled to open July 15, 2009.

Hotel Indigo is San Diego’s first sustainably-built and LEED-certified hotel, featuring 12 stories, 210 rooms, a restaurant and bar, and a rooftop terrace with a reflection pool, fire pits and panoramic views of the cityscape, including a spotlight on baseball games at PETCO Park. Hotel Indigo San Diego is the second property in California owned and operated by InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and will be the flagship hotel on the west coast.

As we await the grand opening of this landmark hotel in San Diego, we focus in on IHG’s support of the local arts community. One of the most astounding facts to know is Hotel Indigo is investing more than $300,000 in the San Diego arts scene, redefining hotel décor with a trendsetting local twist. In working with local artists, photographers and designers, the hotel has captured the coastal culture and character of San Diego.

In early June Hotel Indigo unveiled the first piece of public art: “Indigo Waters” – a 40-foot exterior wall sculpture made of 33 hand-painted, laminated and tempered blue glass panels created by local artist Lisa Schirmer. Following more than a year of design work and two weeks of installation, “Indigo Waters” is now positioned on the western façade of the hotel between the 9th and 12th floors.

“The idea behind the sculpture is to create a wavelike pattern of indigo colors by rotating and repeating square and quarter circle shapes on square glass panels,” said Schirmer.

The glass panels are arranged vertically in a Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) in seven layers on a curved outside wall of the hotel. The Fibonacci sequence and the ratio known as the Golden Mean (or Phi) are math principles found in nature. Adopting this mathematical ratio as a design principle helps create a feeling of balance and effortless beauty. As daylight shifts, the glass will create a dramatic mix of color and movement; tasteful back-lighting at night will create a new composition of colors.

Hotel Indigo San Diego also commissioned local photographer Ian Cummings to take photos of native plants and water-driven imagery, including agaves, echeveria, California poppies, beaches, rivers, lakes and the ocean. From these local images, large-scale photographic murals will arise, and will appear in guestrooms, the hotel lobby, Phi Bar and Bistro and public areas.

Hotel Indigo San Diego opens July 15, 2009.

Insider Tip: IHG has nearly 1,700 hotels in development, which will create 140,000 jobs worldwide over the next few years.