Uptown Minneapolis Attracts Hotel Development

Minneapolis–The Uptown area, which has been without a hotel for more than 30 years, could soon have more than 250 rooms. Earlier this month, a group of south Minneapolis investors led by real estate investor Curt Gunsbury received approval from the city to build a six-story, 114-room boutique hotel just south and west of W. Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue S. Hotel Uptown, as it would be called, would have European-style balconies, a spacious porch on the second floor and rates from $129 to $229 a night. Just a few blocks away, the owner of the Graves 601 Hotel in downtown Minneapolis will co-own and manage a 140-room luxury hotel to be built along Lagoon Avenue. The seven-story hotel will be part of the Mozaic mixed-use project being developed by the Ackerberg Group and CAG Development. Developer Stuart Ackerberg said work on the Graves Uptown Hotel and a 10-story condo tower that is part of the project is expected to be completed early in 2009. Both developers are hoping to capture Uptown revelers as well as business travelers willing to stray from the predictable path of chain hotels and more corporate lodging downtown. “Theres a large percentage of business travelers that want to stay somewhere real and enjoy the street life around them,” Gunsbury said. But the risks are substantial. Ever since the Hotel Carling on Hennepin Avenue shut its doors in the 1970s, the rap against Uptown was that its population was too young and too poor to support a new hotel, much less two of them. And some of the independent shops and restaurants that once made Uptown unique have closed.