We need to consider the specific developer and their intentions if we’re to properly forecast what they may do to Union Station.
LHM is above all a hotelier. They have made a niche in high-end hotels with modern touches, as well as multiple other regular hotels. They operate as well as a closed-end real estate investment trust, needing to produce enough income from their sites to keep their investors happy. From friends in the hotel industry, that has often translated to their properties running on very low margins.
But, back to being a hotelier… Their primary concern is making their sites attractive, both to potential guests of their properties as well as non-guest visitors. This often is manifested in attractive restaurants and bars on their properties, with some retail touches as well.
Notable LHM properties include:
- Hilton at the Ballpark, which includes 360, hands-down the most popular new bar/restaurant in Saint Louis;
- The Cheshire, which has just finished a massive redevelopment of their hotel while continuing to progress on their restaurant building (with yet-to-be-named primary restaurant at the site);
- The Moonrise Hotel in the East Delmar Loop, featuring the Eclipse restaurant and rooftop bar; and
- Westport Plaza, the planned office/retail/restaurant development that also features one of their major hotels.
Best move would be to develop something that feeds the following needs:
1. Attract business guests, especially noting that they are not that close to the America’s Center as other hotels (hence the need for an additional 50K sq.ft. of convention space).
2. Attract individual guests, such as families and vacationers, and doing so in a competitive market… How can they best differentiate themselves to the weekend travelers? What can they offer that other hotels can’t?
3. Generate revenues (predominantly from retail) from non-hotel guests from a site that has long languished for not being able to produce retail revenues. The big question we have is what stores they will add… I ask, will stores be the biggest attraction?
- What will differentiate the Union Station consumer experience from that of Galleria shoppers?
- Will they have non-store attractions to lure people in, such as trains under the shed?
- Will they have plays or concerts?
- How about a climbing wall or other such interactive attractions?
- Could the movie theater come back?
- And most of all, what restaurants will they bring in?
Meanwhile, they’ll have to overcome the stigma that the old Union Station management helped foster, that it was potentially unsafe, that there were crappy offerings, that Nelly was confronted by security for wearing a do-rag, that the homeless just shuffle through it, that it’s only for tourists (now that Hooters is in Kiener Plaza), and that it is overpriced.
My first question: What are you going to do about parking?
LHM is above all a hotelier. They have made a niche in high-end hotels with modern touches, as well as multiple other regular hotels. They operate as well as a closed-end real estate investment trust, needing to produce enough income from their sites to keep their investors happy. From friends in the hotel industry, that has often translated to their properties running on very low margins.
But, back to being a hotelier… Their primary concern is making their sites attractive, both to potential guests of their properties as well as non-guest visitors. This often is manifested in attractive restaurants and bars on their properties, with some retail touches as well.
Notable LHM properties include:
- Hilton at the Ballpark, which includes 360, hands-down the most popular new bar/restaurant in Saint Louis;
- The Cheshire, which has just finished a massive redevelopment of their hotel while continuing to progress on their restaurant building (with yet-to-be-named primary restaurant at the site);
- The Moonrise Hotel in the East Delmar Loop, featuring the Eclipse restaurant and rooftop bar; and
- Westport Plaza, the planned office/retail/restaurant development that also features one of their major hotels.
Best move would be to develop something that feeds the following needs:
1. Attract business guests, especially noting that they are not that close to the America’s Center as other hotels (hence the need for an additional 50K sq.ft. of convention space).
2. Attract individual guests, such as families and vacationers, and doing so in a competitive market… How can they best differentiate themselves to the weekend travelers? What can they offer that other hotels can’t?
3. Generate revenues (predominantly from retail) from non-hotel guests from a site that has long languished for not being able to produce retail revenues. The big question we have is what stores they will add… I ask, will stores be the biggest attraction?
- What will differentiate the Union Station consumer experience from that of Galleria shoppers?
- Will they have non-store attractions to lure people in, such as trains under the shed?
- Will they have plays or concerts?
- How about a climbing wall or other such interactive attractions?
- Could the movie theater come back?
- And most of all, what restaurants will they bring in?
Meanwhile, they’ll have to overcome the stigma that the old Union Station management helped foster, that it was potentially unsafe, that there were crappy offerings, that Nelly was confronted by security for wearing a do-rag, that the homeless just shuffle through it, that it’s only for tourists (now that Hooters is in Kiener Plaza), and that it is overpriced.
My first question: What are you going to do about parking?
