Artist rendering of new Radisson Hotel.  Image courtesy of Normal Lodging LLC.

NORMAL — Over the next seven months, the site of the former Holiday Inn on the north side of Normal will be transformed into a 158-room Radisson Hotel.

Normal Town Council recently approved the redevelopment agreement for the former Holiday Inn, 8 Traders Circle, Normal, with Normal Lodging LLC, a company comprised of Swift Hospitality of Freeport and Sand Lodging of Minnesota.
As part of a $15.5 redevelopment project that is expected to start in January, Normal Lodging LLC will “completely restructure” the former Holiday Inn facility into a Radisson Hotel that will include 158 upscale rooms, a concierge floor and suite, a VIP suite and 10,000 square feet of banquet/meeting space.
“The hotel will be completely reconstructed, so when we’re finished, the hotel will appear to be brand new,” said David Swift, president and chief executive officer of Swift Hospitality.
Although some of the structures in facility already meet the standards that Normal Lodging LLC has set for the Radisson Hotel, including the windows in the atrium that were recently replaced by previous owners, construction crews still have to replace the electrical, mechanical, plumbing, walls, flooring, wall finishes and other structures in the facility.
The Radisson Hotel will also include a FireLake restaurant, an upscale grill house and cocktail bar.
“FireLake is a concept restaurant,” said Swift. “There’s only one other in the country and that’s at the Radisson Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. The FireLake restaurant in Minneapolis is very successful. It’s a very nice, upscale, casual dinning experience.”
Swift expects the Radisson Hotel to open in July or August of 2012.
According to Swift, the hotel site is a “great location” for a Radisson Hotel.
“The Bloomington-Normal market has been a stable market even through this slow down in the economy, and we had an opportunity to buy a piece of real estate that was very well positioned in that market at the connection of Interstate 39, Interstate 55 and Interstate 74,” said Swift. “There’s a lot of traffic that goes right by our door and it’s the main artery into the (Illinois State University) campus and downtown (Normal), so the property was very well positioned.”
In 2008, Normal Town Council expanded its TIF district so it would include the hotel site, as a financial incentive for local developers Normal Hospitality LLC, who owned the hotel property and planned to convert the Holiday Inn site into a Crowne Plaza Hotel.
However, Normal Hospitality LLC was unable to secure the funding they needed for the Crowne Plaza project and Morton Community Bank foreclosed the property in 2009. Normal Lodging LLC bought the property from Morton Community Bank a year later for $2 million.
As part of the redevelopment agreement, Normal Lodging LLC could recover about $3.9 million from the tax increment financing fund and another $1.7 million in rebates from the hotel/motel tax. The hotel/motel tax rebate would occur over seven years.
“We think the Swift group is a very reputable company,” said Normal City Manager Mark Peterson. “They’ve done a number of hotel projects throughout Illinois and we believe that in this case they will be able to get the financing to complete the project.”
The hotel site has been vacant since Holiday Inn closed its operations there in 2006.
According to Peterson, the Holiday Inn did not succeed at the site because of “mismanagement.”
“It was a family-owned operation,” said Peterson. “They owned several hotels. They reached a point where they weren’t putting any money back into the hotel. It was poorly maintained and the staff was not well-trained, and eventually their business fell off dramatically to the point where they couldn’t make their payments to the bank and a lender ended up repossessing the property.
“That used to be a very, very good location. It was a very profitable hotel. They just fell into the wrong management hands unfortunately and that’s why it eventually closed.”