Thank you, hotel bars. In just a few years' time, you have taken the Twin Cities nightlife scene to the next level of cool. You have enabled those of us who live in fly-over land to rub elbows with those who are flying over. You have given us the über-cool Graves and the artsy-cool Chambers. And, just as those places cool off, you give us the W Hotel in the renovated Foshay Tower. Hotel bars -- once the domain of lonely, rumpled traveling salesmen -- are not only as hot as any nightclub, some of them are nightclubs (with no cover!). Three swank hotels have opened in Minneapolis since August -- the W Hotel, the Hotel Minneapolis and a funky little place called aloft (so hip, it's all in lowercase). Like the Chambers and Graves before them, each is anchored by a fun, flashy and refreshing bar scene. Holiday Inns these are not.
There was a time when crashing a bar at a hotel where you were not a guest seemed uncouth -- almost like going into someone's home, drinking their liquor and then leaving. Nationally, the boutique W chain, among others, helped change that by creating destination bars that attract more locals than hotel guests.
In Minneapolis, the W is far and away the metro's blockbuster hotel bar. On weekends, its first-floor bar (dubbed the Living Room for its abundance of oversized furniture) transforms into a nightclub playground for a loud mass of dressed-up, pampered partyers.
"They know, and it's not just the travelers, the W means 'party,' " said the hotel's developer, Ralph Burnet. "And they party hardy."
The Republican National Convention had a role in this sudden uptick of new hotels. But with the Republicans gone, we're stuck with these bastions of swankness, so we might as well put them to good use.
They're needed, too, because there hasn't been a big splash in the nightclub scene since Aqua and Envy opened side by side 18 months ago. You know times are tough in the nightlife industry when hotel bars are the hot thing. But maybe that's an unfair slam on hotels-as-clubs, since some serious players are behind these hot spots. Real estate mogul Burnet masterminded the W's Foshay renovation (he also owns Chambers), with the interior by Toronto firm Munge Leung Design Associates. The W brand is also felt in the build-out of aloft. And Morrissey Hospitality, the company behind the St. Paul Hotel, now has Hotel Minneapolis.
With this glut of hotel bars at an all-time high, the places that sparked the trend are now playing catch-up. The Graves closed its once-mighty Infinity Lounge earlier this year with plans to reopen the space as Bradstreet, a small-plate/mixology lounge, in November. And the Chambers is in the midst of a rejuvenation, with a more lively courtyard scene with colorful furniture, a pool table and cabanas, and changes coming to its minimalist fifth-floor club.
If you're still feeling weird about hanging out at a hotel bar, think about this: You won't be the only one without a room. Even if all the guests from the W's 230 rooms were in its bar, they'd only be a fraction of the hundreds of Twin Cities clubgoers that fill the dance floor each weekend.
