PHILADELPHIA Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants has proposed to convert Philadelphia’s historic Lafayette Building into a 270-key Hotel Monaco.
Kimpton closed on the purchase of the 195,000-sq.-ft. building—located across the street from the landmark Independence Hall—last week for US$11.5 million. The planned Monaco is tentatively slated to debut in mid-2012, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Kimpton opened its first hotel in Philadelphia a year ago. The 230-key Hotel Palomar Philadelphia has recently been awarded LEED Gold certification. “Certainly, the performance of the Palomar helped us with the decision” to build a second hotel here, Kimpton CEO Niki Leondakis tells the Inquirer. “But we’ve been looking in this market for several years.”
The Monaco project also reflects Philadelphia’s emergence as a meetings and conventions hub. The city is opening an expanded convention center in March, and tourism officials are concerned that Philadelphia’s existing hotel inventory is insufficient to handle the expected demand.