MILWAUKEE, Wisc.
With three new hotels being built, and another expected to resume construction, downtown Milwaukee will add around 550 hotel rooms over the next two years--the most in well over a decade. Construction of the hotels--a Marriott, a Hilton Garden Inn, a Staybridge Suites and the independent Brew House Inn & Suites –is driven mainly by business travel, and it will increase by nearly 15 percent the number of hotel rooms within one mile of the Frontier Airlines Center convention facility.
Two hotels will open by the end of this year: the 90-room Brew House Inn and the 128-room Hilton Garden Inn. Both projects involve converting historic buildings: the former Pabst brew house, and the Loyalty Building. Meanwhile, work is about to start on the 200-room Marriott near E. Wisconsin Ave. and N. It will take two years to complete the hotel, which combines new construction and renovated buildings.
Finally, there's a good chance construction will resume this year on the largely completed Staybridge Suites. Work on the 126-room hotel stopped in December 2008, when the project ran short of cash.
There are now 3,774 hotel rooms within one mile of the convention center, says Visit Milwaukee, the city's CVB.
