Hotel owner eyes downtown

The Flint Hills isn’t the only area that has caught Steve Craig’s eye for a hotel. Craig said his company was still interested in building an upscale hotel in downtown Lawrence.

Craig said his company, Linquist & Craig Hotels & Resorts Inc., was continuing to study the feasibility of building a 120- to 130-room, full-service hotel in the 900 block of New Hampshire Street.

“Unfortunately, we’re not able to have a firm timeline on making a decision on the project,” said Craig, who is president and CEO of the company. “But we’re still definitely looking at it. We are taking the approach of we’ll do it when it works.”

The company, with headquarters at 1611 St. Andrews Drive, has been studying the project for more than a year. But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the resulting downturn in the travel industry forced Craig to reassess the project.

In general, lenders have become more reluctant to loan money on travel-based business ventures because of the attack.

“Everything changed after Sept. 11,” Craig said. “The financial markets for the hotel industry have changed and it’s just a tougher business environment than it was before. But we’re still taking a positive approach to the project.”

The hotel could be the final piece of a large redevelopment puzzle for the 900 block of New Hampshire. The redevelopment of the block has been dubbed the Downtown 2000 project and is being led by 9-10 L.C., a Lawrence development group that includes the Shmalberg and Moore families.

A new city-owned 500-space parking garage and the new Lawrence Arts Center already have opened in the block. Construction work is under way on retail, office and apartment space, and plans call for more retail and office space to be built.

The hotel would be built on the southwest corner of Ninth and New Hampshire streets, in the vacant lot just east of the US Bank Tower building. If built, the hotel would add a new dimension to the Lawrence skyline. Craig said the building likely would be seven to nine stories tall and cost $8 million to $10 million.

Craig said if the company decided to move forward with the project, the hotel definitely would attempt to establish itself in the upscale lodging market. The facility would include a restaurant, lounge, workout center, meeting rooms and room service.

Among the possible brands for the hotel: Radisson; Hilton, including its DoubleTree, Red Lion and Embassy Suites hotels; and Six Continents, including its Crown Plaza, and Intercontinental hotels.

The hotel would be the third for downtown Lawrence, joining the SpringHill Suites by Marriott and the Eldridge Hotel. Craig said he was concerned that three hotels might be too many for the area.

“Whether there is enough demand is the $64 question right now,” Craig said. “I think eventually the answer will be yes, but whether that’s the case right now, I don’t know. We’re looking at that very closely.

“But we do know downtown Lawrence remains very popular, and that’s what attracted us to this idea in the first place.”

Linquist & Craig’s roots in Lawrence run back to the mid-1950s, when the company developed the town’s first Holiday Inn on South Iowa Street. Today the company primarly owns hotels in the greater metropolitan areas of Kansas City and Los Angeles.