MSP seeks proposals for hotel project

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is moving to join many of its peers across the country by offering hotel rooms on the airport grounds.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission is seeking proposals for a full-service hotel with a skyway connection to Concourse C in Terminal 1-Lindbergh. The proposed 2-acre hotel site abuts the U.S. Postal Service facility next to the main terminal's outbound traffic lanes and is near the Blue Line light-rail station.

Several airports around the United States have on-site hotels, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Chicago-O'Hare and Boston Logan. Denver International Airport is adding a high-profile hotel to its main terminal, with Golden Valley-based M.A. Mortenson as one of the three general contractors on that project.

"We believe there is a lot of demand for that in the market," said airport spokesman Patrick Hogan.

Some airports own and operate the hotels, but that won't be the case in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The commission is looking for a development team that would take on the financing, design, construction and operations of the hotel. The selected development team will work closely with the airport and its operations, but the airport will not carry the management risk. Instead, the operator will enter into a lease on the land with the commission for 40 to 60 years, according to the request for proposal, which was released Friday.

Four years ago, MSP officials made a hotel one of its 15 priorities when it published its 2030 Long Term Comprehensive Plan. While the commission has a vision for the hotel, it hopes to work out feasibility and design details with the development community at a meeting for potential developers on Thursday.

"In some airport situations, they have a very specific plan of what they want to get done and how they want it done. But because we have been trying to figure out exactly where this service would go, we wanted to get input before finalizing the plans," said Eric Johnson, director of commercial management and airline affairs for the Commission.

The initiative by the MSP comes after a spate of hotel development in Bloomington. The 500-room Radisson Blu opened on the southside of nearby Mall of America, and 342-room JW Marriott is under construction on the mall's north side.

And while Bloomington boasts more than 8,000 hotel rooms, Kirby Payne, president of Rhode Island-based HVS Hotel Management, points out that there is a major difference for air travelers between hotels that are connected to an airport — like the skyway-connected hotel being proposed at MSP — and those that are simply on airport property.

"If it's a part of the terminal, does it have more value than say one that is connected by a skyway? Not much. But as soon as you start putting people on vans, it has less value," Payne said. "People want to roll their suitcases from the airplane to their hotel without getting on a shuttle."

The Commission plans to release a revised version of its request for proposals after soliciting input at the meeting. Proposals are due Dec. 18. The winning proposal will likely be announced in February.