A 49-year-old Holiday Inn in downtown Rochester, MN will soon be transformed into a Hotel Indigo location – a boutique brand owned by United Kingdom-based hospitality giant Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG).
Once the rebranding is complete, the hotel will likely be the first Indigo location in Minnesota.
The 173-room hospitality building at 220 Broadway Ave. S was purchased by Newport Beach, CA-based EKN Development Group and Duluth, MN-based Oliver Cos. for $18.17 million in a deal that closed March 21, according to a certificate of real estate value made public on Monday.
The purchase price works out to $105,000 per room, and is more than three times what the seller, CMPJ Enterprises, paid when it acquired the property for $5.25 million in 2006, according to Olmsted County property records.
An IHG spokesperson confirmed Thursday that it was working on an agreement with EKN and its partners to bring the Indigo brand to Rochester, but otherwise declined to comment.
Executives with Oliver Cos. did not respond to requests for comment. However, EKN sent a statement saying that renovations will begin this summer and last eight to 12 months.
The hotel will debut under the Indigo banner in the first quarter of 2019, but will continue to operate as a Holiday Inn until the work is completed.
IHG rolled out the Indigo brand in 2004, according to its website. Each hotel is unique and designed to reflect local history and culture. As of December 2017, there were 85 Indigo hotels open, and another 82 in the pipeline.
It will be a nice refresher for the hotel, said Dan Nelson, a Rochester-based area director of sales and marketing for Willmar, MN-based TPI Hospitality. The hotel, which is described by its new ownership as a “monolithic fortress” in the Brutalist style, was once a pillar of the community, but has been eclipsed in recent years by other contenders, he said.
It’s also symptomatic of changes in the hospitality marketplace, he added, which has seen an explosion of new brands over the last five to 10 years as hoteliers vie for increasingly selective customers.
“Just changing the carpet and furniture doesn’t get it done anymore,” Nelson said on Wednesday.
EKN has two other hotel projects in the works for Rochester. The company hopes to build Civic on 1st, a 175-room upscale, extended-stay hotel at the current site of the American Legion Post #92. It is also planning to build an upscale hotel at the current site of the Virgil’s Auto Clinic & Towing, which sits just across Second Avenue from the Mayo Clinic campus.
Mike Bhakta, owner of CMPJ Enterprises, declined to comment on the sale to EKN and Oliver Cos.
