June 23, 2013--PEORIA — Sometime Friday, probably around 3 p.m., the Marriott Pere Marquette is expected to welcome its first overnight guest.
If that person enters the hotel through its Main Street doors, the front desk will be on the right. The lobby will abut a “great room” that takes up most of the first floor and includes a bar and restaurant. No walls will separate those spaces.
Banquet rooms, including a ballroom with 24 crystal lighting fixtures, await at the top of a polished-marble staircase. All of it is to have a sleek, contemporary look.
If the guest didn’t look at the outside walls, he or she might not suspect the Pere Marquette first opened in 1927. Never would have guessed it played host to presidents (John F. Kennedy), piano players (Liberace) and perfidious politicians (Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan).
“It’s not the same hotel,” the project’s developer, Gary Matthews, said last week. “That’s what everybody is going to see.”
Matthews and a band of the hotel’s employees, which Marriott has been training for about a month, have witnessed the improvements. Media won’t get a peek until Friday morning, just prior to a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the lobby.
One outsider, however, already has seen what’s been going on inside the Grand Dame of 501 Main St. Understandable, considering his organization contributed more than $30 million to the hotel project.
“‘Stunning’ is not an overstatement,” Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis said. “I can’t wait for people to see what they’ve done in there.”
Ardis and others also can’t wait to see what impact the new, improved Pere Marquette will have on plans to revitalize Downtown Peoria and the adjacent Warehouse District. This catalyst includes the Pere Marquette’s companion hotel, an adjacent Courtyard by Marriott that is under construction and set to open next year.
“This is where the rubber meets the road,” Ardis said.
The renovation
Before the Pere Marquette could reopen following its December 2011 closure, before plans percolating since late 2008 could be realized, plenty of items had to meet the Dumpster.
According to Matthews, each of the 287 rooms in the hotel, save the Presidential Suite on the 12th floor, was stripped bare and refurbished. Same with the hallways.
New plumbing was installed. So were new electrical and heating and air-conditioning systems.
Old annoyances, such as asbestos, had to be removed. Once common in building construction, the material is considered a health hazard.
“We kept finding little surprises that turned into big surprises,” Matthews said. “Every time we found asbestos, that was another possible sleepless night.”
Sleepless nights aren’t ideal for a hotel, nor for its bottom line.
The original $93 million budget was exceeded by more than 10 percent, Matthews said. The budget includes construction of the Courtyard by Marriott and an adjacent parking deck that opened in March.
Asbestos removal accounted for about 90 percent of the budget increase, according to Matthews.
Those issues also helped set back the grand reopening, which had been scheduled for March 1. Matthews’ development firm, EM Properties, owed the city $41,000 for every month the opening was delayed.
“When you’re trying to renovate an existing structure, there are a lot of things that pop up that you don’t anticipate,” City Manager Patrick Urich said. “They’ve had a lot of unanticipated expenses they’ve had to deal with.”
Attention to detail
Some of the anticipated expenses weren’t easy to handle, either.
Workers had to construct two sample rooms — one with two double beds, another with a king bed — in the hotel, with materials Marriott approved. Then the company’s inspectors gave the rooms the once-over.
“Practically everything had to be changed,” Matthews said. “The carpet wasn’t what they wanted, whatever. It’s one thing to pick out swatches, it’s another thing to see it done.”
Marriott demonstrated the same amount of concern regarding everything from light fixtures to where television sets will be situated in each room. The average daily room rate probably will be $159, Matthews said.
City officials hope the attention to detail helps return normalcy to Main Street, which was noticeably quieter in the Pere Marquette’s absence.
They also hope the renovated hotel’s influence goes beyond that thoroughfare.
“I think it is really going to be an opportunity for things we’ve talked about these last few years, about how the Marriott would really be the beginning of a revival of Downtown,” Ardis said. “I see the dividends paying off more than we could have expected.”
It’s more than the 70-year-old Matthews might have expected as a 7-year-old, when he and his family took shelter in the Pere Marquette lobby during the Peoria Santa Claus Parade.
“It was a very cold, snowy morning,” Matthews said. “We never stayed there — my folks couldn’t afford it — but I looked in and thought, ‘Wow, this is how the other half lives.’
“I’ve put an awful lot of my life into this, and many other people have as well. I think it’s going to be a success.”
