As part of its plan to go upscale, Carlson Hotels of Minnetonka will spend $125 million to build a "Radisson Blu" hotel in Chicago's new Aqua at Lakeshore East development near Millennium Park.
The hotel is one of five "upper upscale" Radisson Blu hotels that Carlson plans to build in major U.S. cities over the next five years. They will be modeled on 200 existing Carlson Blu hotels around the world that, while not in the luxury category, are fancier than most existing Radissons.
For example, the Chicago hotel will have indoor and outdoor pools and a 1.5 mile running track. The hotel itself will include 18 floors with 224 rooms, and will be part of an 81-story tower that also includes apartments and condominiums.
This will be the first Radisson Blu hotel in the United States. Other U.S. cities under consideration as Radisson Blu locations include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
The new hotel is part of a large bet Carlson is placing on a recovery in the upscale hotel business by the time the Chicago Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel opens in the fall of 2011.
"We strongly believe that in 12 to 18 months we will see hotel occupancy rates start stabilizing, although room rates still have a long way to go," said Thorsten Kirschke, Carlson's executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Carlson Hotels the Americas division in Minnetonka.
Carlson will spend as much as $700 million on the five new Radisson Blu hotels as part of a five-year, $1.5 billion rebuilding program it recently announced. The five-year project also includes spending $600 million to upgrade 159 existing Radisson hotels around the country, most of them franchised.
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