Allen Richards' Blog: West Town’s Ace Hotel Coming Up Spades

The Ace Hotel under construction at 311 North Morgan Street (Courtesy of Joe Zekas/YoChicago!)

They’ve gone from spades to cranes at the site of the new Ace Hotel joining the club of newcomers in the heart of the Fulton Market District of West Town. Joe Zekas over at YoChicago! beamed over the photo above, showing work moving along nicely on the project across the street from 1K Fulton, the new Midwest headquarters for multicolored tech giant Google.

The $35 million hipster hotel at 311 North Morgan Street was designed by GREC Architects, and will have 159 rooms over ground floor retail space. Not surprisingly, the developer is the locally prolific Sterling Bay.

Of concern is the fact that the hotel will only have 30 parking spaces — all underground. Its location is not exactly transit-friendly for people coming in from either airport. But Ace appears to be targeting young business travelers, not tourists. People who are more likely to arrive by Uber than Family Truckster.

If you’re not familiar with the Ace brand, it’s a chain out of Portland, Oregon that tends to be a pioneer in gentrifying neighborhoods. In one of its early projects, the chain correctly positioned itself with a new door in the core of Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood just before that area shifted from tramps to tech-heads. The same can be said in Palm Springs, where it was one of the leaders of the pack of swank retro motels that have opened in the last few years by renovating properties that were hip in the 50’s, but far past their primes. Rooms in some of those P.S. renovations that were once $29/night now go for $500+.