Jun 2, 2016, 12:13pm EDT

If you have passed the future home of the Omni Louisville Hotel lately, you probably noticed all the commotion on the site.

Crews have been on the site, bounded by Second, Third and Liberty streets and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, for a few months now, but it has only been lately that we have seen vertical progress.

According to the project manager for the project, you can expect that progress to ramp up considerably during the month of June.

Jeremy Dawkins, Omni project manager, said in a new Omni newsletter that the project is still on track for a spring 2018 opening.

The project’s general manager, Birmingham, Ala.-based Brasfield & Gorrie, also has tasked contractor F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. Inc., of Indianapolis, to establish the vertical support columns that have begun dotting the construction site in the last week or two.

“Beginning in June, visual progress will start being made as the project officially begins to go vertical with construction of each floor,'” Dawkins said in the letter.

Evelyn Strange, president of Louisville-based Advanced Electrical Systems Inc., Omni’s prime electrical contractor, said AES is taking its electrical power for the Omni and its parking garage from five dedicated LG&E underground vaults.

But Strange noted in the newsletter that a challenge is working in this type of setting and its limited space because of the sheer number of hotel rooms and apartments planned.

AES has worked on major projects in Louisville before, including the KFC Yum Center and Ford Motor Co.’s Kentucky Truck Plant expansion.

As we have previously reported, the 30-story, 853,000-square-foot hotel and luxury apartment complex will have about 612 hotel rooms and 225 luxury apartments, an urban food market, multiple restaurants, meeting and conference center space and a speakeasy with bowling lanes, among other amenities. (Check out the attached gallery to see how it will look.)

The project has been estimated to cost nearly $300 million, with the city and the state partnering with Omni to cover the costs.

Marty Finley covers economic development, commercial real estate, government, education and sports business.