![]() It adds up to a natural destination for an active traveler or an obvious “staycation” for someone who wants to trade the kids and the suburbs for a day of tennis, swimming and the spa, followed by dinner in the city and then breakfast at the hotel, overlooking the outdoor pool. One room was designed by the Florida-based firm owned by tennis star Venus Williams, V-Starr Interiors (she also designed the tennis lounge), the Tribune reported. Rooms are simple, clean and sleek, and flooded with natural light through broad windows. The exercise areas and indoor pool, naturally, feel like a fitness center, but the outdoor pool and restaurant seem more like they belong to a hotel. Spaces are a fusion of athletic center and hotel. In a bid to create a high-end experience, there are elaborate finishings in all directions, including faux greenery on the walls and goose feather chandeliers in the locker rooms, the Tribune reported. MacEwen’s DMAC Architecture both designed and built the hotel, and came up with a structure that’s long on sturdy, rustic materials: stone, glass, wood, granite and even tall birch trunks, used “as a threshold between public and private space,” MacEwen said. As architect Dwayne MacEwen said, “It’s 94 percent amenities and 6 percent hotel,” the Tribune reported. When you’re sleeping, who cares where you are? But when awake, Midtown offers guests something most hotels don’t: a world-class health club. The synergy is particularly strong on the hotel side. “We’re in a stage in the hotel industry and the club industry where, marrying them the way we have, you create a whole different category,” he said. “I don’t recommend doing it this way.”īut, he said, once the idea struck him, it seemed obvious, the Tribune reported. “It was really hard and really expensive and really out of sequence,” Schwartz said. ![]() Executing the hotel at the moment of Schwartz’s inspiration was not simple the developer needed to pivot on a work-in-progress, shifting the foundation from concrete to steel, the Tribune reported. Though there is at least one nearby hotel, The Hotel at Midtown furthers a recent trend of neighborhood boutique hotels. “We’re in the middle of some of the greatest neighborhoods in Chicago, and there are no hotels at all,” said Schwartz, who worked in the hotel industry for six years before joining Midtown, a company launched by his father and grandfather in 1970. It was, he said, the proverbial light bulb moment, the Tribune reported. The idea to include a hotel only came after ground had been broken, as Schwartz stood chatting on the top floor of the parking garage. fitness center in addition to his 16 remaining indoor tennis courts. Schwartz, who operates eight Midtown clubs, four of which are in the Chicago area, figured the opportunity presented a chance to build a gleaming, 100,000-sq. fitness center and a tennis court, the Tribune reported. Costing upward of $80 million, the project is rooted in the city’s plan to reconfigure the intersection of Fullerton, Damen and Elston avenues, which caused Midtown to lose its 15,000-sq. We wanted to diversify.”ĭiversification has come in the form of a handsome fitness center that includes rows of machines, classes galore, an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a full-service spa, a boxing studio, a golf course simulator, and a restaurant called Chromium that tilts more decadent than health-conscious, the Tribune reported.Ībove all that, on the top two floors of the five-story building, is the hotel that offers views of downtown. “You satisfy your members more when you offer more. Though Schwartz said the tennis club remains profitable enough to operate on its own, “people don’t play tennis as their only source of activity anymore,” he said. The result is the Midtown Athletic Club, which opened Labor Day weekend, and The Hotel at Midtown, which will debut November 10, the Tribune reported. “If you’re looking for our bible, that’s it,” said Midtown’s president and CEO, Steven Schwartz.įounded nearly 50 years ago as Midtown Tennis Club, a changing neighborhood, changing city and changing consumer tastes have led the property to reinvent itself for a 21st-century audience. You’ll find a slim, 122-page paperback copy of the “Official Rules of Tennis,” the Chicago Tribune reported Slide open the bedside drawer in the 55 rooms at The Hotel at Midtown in Chicago and you won’t find the Bible. fitness center, indoor and outdoor pools, and restaurant. The five-story building features views of downtown with a 55-room boutique hotel, 16 indoor tennis courts, 100,000-sq. Founded 50 years ago as Midtown Tennis Club, the downtown Chicago facility has been reinvented through an $80 million project.
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