Dutch hotelier to add 280 rooms to planned 47-story tower, then buy a piece of it
CitizenM opening six floors within 47-story tower being developed by Sterling Bay and Magellan
A Netherlands-based hotel company plans to open a 280-key hotel within Sterling Bay and Magellan Development Group’s upcoming 47-story building at 300 N. Michigan Avenue. And once it’s done that, it plans to buy the hotel portion from the developers.
CitizenM’s 280-key hotel will occupy floors six through 15 of the 523-foot-tall tower, located just south of the Chicago River. The building also will include 289 rental apartments, 25,000 square feet of retail space, residential amenities on the 46th floor and a 22-space parking garage below ground, the Chicago Tribune reported.
As a self-described “affordable luxury” hotel company, citizenM offers stylish rooms in top locations while keeping room rates down by skipping services such as room service and concierges.
Even so, the Dutch company will face stiff competition from the many other recently built hotels. In the past five years, hotel construction has added 8,100 new rooms across the city, accounting for a 22 percent increase and leading to lower occupancy and lower rates in 2019.
Details of the hotel were shared Tuesday by citizenM and the building’s developers, Sterling Bay and Magellan Development Group. The developers’ plans for a high-rise with apartments on the site were reported in May 2017, with additional details, including the inclusion of the hotel, emerging earlier this year.
Construction is expected to begin early next year, but it’s unclear when the hotel and the rest of the building will open. If an undisclosed opening schedule is met, a citizenM subsidiary will buy the hotel portion of the building from the developers once it’s complete, according to a press release.
Chicago-based bKL Architecture is designing the tower and Amsterdam-based design firm Concrete is handling the hotel’s interiors. Wanxiang America Real Estate Group, a Chicago-based real estate investment arm of Chinese auto parts manufacturer Wanxiang Group, is an equity investor in the project.
In the U.S., citizenM has developed hotels in Seattle, Boston and two in New York, with others in the pipeline in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
