New airport hotel would reflect Minnesota landscape

Artist rendering of future hotel at MSP
This artist's rendering depicts a future hotel at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Graves Hospitality, which is based in Minneapolis, is proposing a 9-story full-service hotel with 300 rooms.
Courtesy Graves Hospitality

Minneapolis-based Graves Hospitality today provided a look at its design for a new hotel at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

At nine stories, the 300-room luxury hotel would have a glass facade designed to generate reflections across the building. It would feature stone and other materials from Minnesota.

"The glass is kind of a waved dimensional," CEO Benjamin Graves said. "[It] looks like waves as you drive pass, reflects what is going on with the river banks and lakes in Minnesota."

People approaching Terminal 1 would see the hotel on their left, on land once occupied by Northwest Airlines hangars.

Plans call for the hotel to have a skyway connecting directly to a security gate at Concourse C. The connection has an estimated price tag of $9.5 million, but how the airport and Graves would split the cost is subject to negotiation.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission has approved the project but it still needs an OK from the Federal Aviation Administration because of the hotel's height. It is slated to open before the 2018 Super Bowl.

Graves has not put a price tag on the project or disclosed expected room rates.

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