Eldridge plans to expand hotel

One of Lawrence’s more historic businesses has plans for a large, modern expansion.

The ownership group of the Eldridge Hotel has filed plans at City Hall for a six-story, 38-room expansion of the hotel, which was famously burned by William Quantrill during the Civil War.

Rendering for the proposed expansion of The Eldridge Hotel. Courtesy: City of Lawrence/Paul Werner Architects

The expansion would occur in the vacant lot directly south of the hotel at Seventh and Massachusetts streets. Work could begin in the next several months, if the project wins the necessary approvals from City Hall, said Paul Werner, the Lawrence-based architect designing the project.

Werner said the expansion will almost double the number of rooms in the hotel, which currently stands at 48. Unlike the current rooms, which are all suites, most of the new space will be used for more traditional double queen-bed hotel rooms. Werner said the hotel’s ownership group believes that will help the hotel better attract sports teams, which are expected to become a bigger part of the city’s lodging industry.

“Teams are already trying to book rooms for upcoming events at Rock Chalk Park,” Werner said via email.

The expansion also will include a much larger ground-floor restaurant space, larger kitchen, new meeting and reception facilities, and a banquet hall that will be twice the size of the existing ballroom.

Renderings show the expansion being approximately the same height as the existing Eldridge building. The plans also show a fairly large balcony area about two stories up that will serve as a place for people to gather and overlook bustling Massachusetts Street.

The Eldridge’s ownership group, which is led by Lawrence businessman Thomas Fritzel, had proposed a similar expansion in 2010, but the economy faltered and the expansion was never built. The 2010 expansion plans called for only 16 new rooms, but had some unique features such as a retractable roof over the dining and banquet areas. Werner said the retractable roof isn’t included in the new proposal, in part because the hotel group needed the space for additional rooms.

The expansion project continues a multiyear trend of adding more hotel space in the city. A group led by Fritzel constructed The Oread near the Kansas University campus in 2008. A separate group currently is building a multistory Marriott hotel at Ninth and New Hampshire streets. And the city and KU currently are searching for a consultant to study the feasibility of a conference center/hotel project either in downtown or elsewhere in the community.

The Eldridge project will need to win approvals from both the Historic Resources Commission and the Lawrence Douglas-County Planning Commission. It wasn’t clear Wednesday whether the project would seek financial incentives from the city, such as tax increment financing or a special sales tax district, both of which have been used by The Oread and the Marriott hotel projects.

— City reporter Chad Lawhorn can be reached at 832-6362. Follow him at Twitter.com/clawhorn_ljw