Carlson Hotels of Minnetonka will spend $125 million to build a Radisson Blu hotel here in the new Aqua at Lakeshore East development near Millennium Park.
The hotel is one of five “upper upscale” Radisson Blu hotels that Carlson plans to build in major U.S. cities over the next five years. They will be modeled on 200 existing Carlson Blu hotels around the world that, while not in the luxury category, are fancier than most existing Radissons.
The224-room Chicago hotel is expected to include indoor and outdoor pools and a 1.5 mile running track. It is scheduled to come online in the fall of 2011. This will be the first Radisson Blu hotel in the country. Other U.S. cities under consideration as Radisson Blu locations include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Carlson will spend as much as $700 million on the five new Radisson Blu hotels as part of a five-year, $1.5 billion rebuilding program it recently announced. The five-year project also includes spending $600 million to upgrade 159 existing Radisson hotels around the country, most of them franchised.
