La Quinta Building First Chi-Town Property
By Gina Kenny

CHICAGO-La Quinta is constructing its first hotel in Chicago at 1 S. Franklin St. in the Loop’s Financial District. LQ Management LLC, based in Irving, TX, acquired the nine-story building in 2006, says Temple Weiss, executive vice president of acquisitions and development for LQ Management. The Jewish Federation Building was reportedly sold for $9.2 million after the Jewish Federation bought an office condo at 200 W. Monroe, sources say.

The La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel will have 241 guest rooms and is expected to open next fall. Two wings will be added to the building, which was constructed in 1958. A 21,000-sf wing will be constructed closest to Madison Street and a 24,000-sf wing constructed closest to Arcade Place. The 131,000-sf hotel will have about 1,500 sf of meeting space and 3,627 sf of restaurant and retail space, Weiss tells GlobeSt.com.

The hotel will also have a business center, an indoor heated swimming pool, a spa and an exercise room and will feature four different room layouts including two-room suites. The location near the lakefront and the city’s museums “do make us an attractive alternative,” he says. The architect for the project is locally based A. Epstein & Sons International and the contractor is William A. Randolph Inc., based in Gurnee, IL.

There are 11 La Quinta hotels in the Chicagoland area but this will be the first one in the city of Chicago. LQ management operates and provides franchise services for more than 600 La Quinta Inn and La Quinta Inn & Suites hotels in 45 states in addition to Canada. The hotel brand did not expand into the Midwest until it acquired the Baymont brand in 2004, he says. The company then began to specifically look in Chicago to construct a hotel “We saw there was a demand for moderately priced lodging in the market place and not a lot of supply to meet it,” Weiss says. “In particular, there’s really no moderately priced lodging at all within the Loop.”