Situated on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, ornamented by historic homes and anchored by a quaint downtown near the water, the one-square-mile city of Excelsior is again proving enticing to new development -- a 58-room hotel and a micro brewery.
"It's a really cool town and right on the lake, and it's been that way for 150 years," said City Council Member Greg Miller. "We have a lot of restaurants and there is a lot of night life."
So strong is the city's allure that City Council members recently felt compelled to find out if Excelsior would have enough water capacity for the two new developments that are being contemplated by different developers. Although Lake Minnetonka was long ago the city's water source, all Excelsior homes and businesses now get their water from three wells sunk into an underground aquifer.
WSB & Associates of Minneapolis studied the water supply and reported recently that based on current use and fire protection needs, the city does have enough water capacity to serve a hotel, a micro brewery and another 450 single-family homes, if ever needed.
With that finding, a proposal to build a hotel will likely be submitted this fall, said Neil Weber, who is the architect of the hotel that Charlie James wants to build in downtown Excelsior.
The site would be a property James has owned for 35 years. It was the former home of a Pizza Hut and is now a vacant lot at the corner of Water and Lake streets.
"What we are going to be proposing is a small 58-room boutique hotel to bring back the same kind of character that once was on Lake Minnetonka with the resort hotels in the 1800s," Weber said. "Right now there exists no hotel on Lake Minnetonka."
Between 1853 and 1964, there were more than 60 hotels and boarding houses around Lake Minnetonka, including the notable Excelsior House, according to "Lake Minnetonka's Historic Hotels," by Ellen Wilson Meyer.
