Written on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 2:59pm by Mark | 5 Comments

Hotel concept

Rocco Termini has been kicking around plans for purchasing and redeveloping the AM&A’s flagship store into a hotel with banquet facilities. Its an exciting plan but met with skepticism due to the mostly the building’s past and market conditions. Who knows whether or not it will happen but if it does indeed become a hotel, it will have to be a unique one that potential guests couldn’t find otherwise in the area.

So I introduce to you, Hotel Minneapolis. Its owned by Doubletree but has very little similarity to the Doubletree nearby. The hotel is a former bank building that is bland in an endearing way that only modernism can achieve (see: AM&A’s Main St. facade). The developers kept all the safes in place and turned it into a hotel that focused on being stylish yet business-oriented while being in a fairly sterile part of a fairly sterile downtown (see: downtown Buffalo).

The hotel embraces the history of the structure, leaving its unique assets in tact, fully emphasizing its history, while conveying a very contemporary image through the designs of the rooms and the graphic presentation of the hotel through room key cards and the website.

It has been discussed many, many times in 2009 about the potential over-saturation of the market for hotel space downtown but there are niche markets yet to be appeased that an Embassy Suites, Hyatt, Doubletree, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn, or Best Western can not quite fulfill. That is why Mark Croce is moving along with his boutique hotel, and that is why the AM&A’s has a shot at new life with the right hotel chain.

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5 Comments

  1. Brian Castner says:
    November 8, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    I’m not sure many insulated Buffalonians realize that in most major cities, the Hampton Inn, Comfort, Best Western and Holiday Inn are not major pillars of the downtown hotel market. In my opinion, we have two and half hotels downtown – Hyatt, Embassy and Adam’s Mark. Plenty of room for grown-up, big boy hotel rooms. I don’t think it’ll be the niche market – it should be the major market for business travelers, conventions, and tourists not on a budget. And I’m okay with the Holiday Inn and Best Western losing market share.

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  2. Giovanni Centurione says:
    November 8, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    I’d like to see a W Hotel or Westin in our downtown.

    Reply
  3. STEEL says:
    November 9, 2009 at 12:59 am

    All of the many hotel schemes floated sounds like it will be adding too many new rooms. Fact is all of them together don’t add up to what is considered to be a mid size hotel of 300 to 400 rooms.

    I wish I could see what this one looks like. All I could find are some trendy soon to be not trendy graphics

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  4. Giovanni Centurione says:
    November 10, 2009 at 2:40 am

    But if developers can continue to build new hotels all over the burbs (Amherst, Williamsville, Cheektowaga, etc.), then why not downtown???? I know when I travel to other cities, I WANT to be in the city center, NOT in the burbs. So why would’nt more variety of hotel options (and prices) be a good thing?

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  5. Giovanni Centurione says:
    November 11, 2009 at 2:31 am

    Some out of town friends of mine are in town this week and staying at the Comfort Suites Downtown. While I was in the lobby I noticed ALOT of people all asking the front desk how to get to the HSBC Arena. ……This just shows that people DO stay in the downtown hotels not just for conventions, but also for sporting events, theater, special exhibits at local museums and art galleries, or just want to party (remember most places near by have last call at 2am, so why not come to Buffalo and party till 4am?) , family reunions, and more. This is why I believe adding more hotel rooms can be a good thing.

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