Loews Hotels spent ample time looking around Chicago before settling on the Streeterville location where it will open the doors on a new 400-room property in March.
“We had options to build a smaller hotel in denser areas,” hotel spokesman Erik Grazetti said. “We chose this location due to the open space.”
While the notion of open space in downtown Chicago doesn’t quite mean rolling, unspoiled vistas, it will lend Loews’ first Chicago hotel a relatively neighborhood-like vibe just outside the Loop. (The brand previously managed the House of Blues hotel and took over a Rosemont property near O’Hare International Airport earlier this year.)
Among the features Grazetti most eagerly touted during a tour — as construction buzzed all around — was an outdoor, 9,000-square-foot deck on the third floor featuring a view over Ogden Slip and onto Lake Michigan. He called it the “largest outdoor flexible hotel space in the city.”
“It will be a bar when we want it to be a bar, it can be a wedding venue, and we can do meetings out there,” Grazetti said.
The hotel, at 455 North Park Drive, will feature 400 rooms (23 of which are suites), about three-quarters of which will include views of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It will occupy the bottom 14 floors of a 52-story high-rise that will have apartments on its higher floors. There will be no shared space between the hotel and the residential part of the building.
In many ways, the hotel will reflect the trend of hotel-as-social-space: The lobby will encourage lounging with a bar, fireplace, free Wi-Fi and work spaces. Kid-friendly movies will be shown at the pool. And the third-floor patio will be open year-round, featuring a bar, yoga deck and grass lawn for bocce ball and croquet (and possibly an ice-skating rink in winter, though that has yet to be confirmed).
The hotel will be the 22nd in the Loews chain as it expands aggressively to compete in the “modern, upscale” category. Its rooms are decorated in mostly white, black and gray and feature clean simple lines reflecting a clear Mies van der Rohe inspiration. The first floor will house Rural Society, a meat-focused small-plate restaurant run by celebrity chef Jose Garces. It’s even possible to book a room at the chain through Twitter with the hashtag “#bookloews.”
The cheapest room in peak season will run about $250, but there will be an early chance for a discount: a Cyber Monday sale (Dec. 1) that nets 20 percent off all Loews hotels in 2015 — even the Chicago hotel, which won’t open for another three months.
Loews spokeswoman Sarah Murov said Chicago was an important piece of the company’s expansion, which will include a new Orlando hotel in 2016. The key, she said, was finding a space that would feel like a piece of a neighborhood to guests.
“We see our hotels as vital parts of the destination and the neighborhood,” she said. “This is a great location that has the potential to feed in from different points from both a local and guest perspective.”
Twitter @joshbnoel
