As The Marcus Corporation celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, its hospitality division, Marcus Hotels & Resorts, is seeing its approximately $160-million investment into several properties in Wisconsin come to fruition.
By this summer, two of the earliest properties in the company’s portfolio, The Pfister Hotel and the Hilton Milwaukee, will have completed extensive renovations.
“The renovations for both properties were planned for 2020, but then the pandemic hit,” said Michael Evans, president, Marcus Hotels & Resorts. “It was that time in their life cycle for the hotels to be renovated, particularly the historic wing of The Pfister.”
The Pfister Hotel, a 132-year-oid property once billed as the “Grand Dame of Milwaukee,” has long served as host to presidents and celebrities, but, by the early 1960s, it had gone through tough times. This gave Ben Marcus, founder of The Marcus Corporation, the opportunity to purchase the hotel out of bankruptcy. It was then that Marcus Hotels & Resorts was born.
A rendering of the renovated lobby of the Hilton Milwaukee
For this latest $20-million renovation, Evans noted, “We completely gutted the rooms in the historic tower, and redid the lobby and meeting and event space.” The final touches—adding a new revolving door and finishing the café renovation—are expected to be finished in the first quarter.
The Hilton Milwaukee, which was the company’s second hotel when it was purchased in 1972 as the Sheraton-Schroeder Hotel, is in the midst of a $40-million renovation—Marcus Hotels & Resorts’ largest investment ever. All 554 guestrooms in the historic hotel’s original footprint are being redesigned, while the remaining 175 rooms located in the west tower will eventually be removed from the available room inventory.
The company also invested in a comprehensive renovation of its Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva, WI. The multiphase transformation “started early in the pandemic because of how much resorts were booming,” said Evans. The property’s lobby, guestrooms and meeting space were redone between 2021 and 2024. “We’re also building a new short golf course and are now working on a new spa,” he added.
Back in 2019, Marcus Hotels & Resorts converted the Intercontinental Milwaukee into the Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel, which, as the name suggests, is an art-focused property. Evans expressed that the company is looking to grow the Saint Kate concept as a brand.
“Art is really in the DNA of our company, and we’ve had other art programs throughout our hotels,” he said. “Currently, we have what we call an artist-in-residence program, where we have a studio set up in the hotels with artists working live, and they are very interactive with our guests. That’s something that we’ve been doing for years, and then the idea came to build an art hotel. You walk into that hotel and it’s really a celebration of all the arts. We even have local artists involved in the design of the hotel, and five of its rooms were uniquely designed by five different artists.”
In the last five years, Marcus acquired two hotels—the Kimpton Hotel Monaco in Pittsburgh and Loews Minneapolis— via joint ventures. Evans said the company plans on doing more JVs in the future.
A rendering of the lobby atrium at The Pfister Hotel
“Historically, with the hotels that we own, like The Pfister and the Grand Geneva, we own 100% of the equity ourselves,” he said. “Going forward with new hotels that we acquire, the model is for us to be a GP [general partner]or co-GP, and to raise LP [limited partner]capital to fund the majority of the necessary equity.”
The Loews Minneapolis was subsequently rebranded to The Lofton Hotel, which joined the Tapestry Collection by Hilton.
“Through the pandemic, the hotel was on and off the market a bit, and the price kept coming down over time,” said Evans. “When we thought the pricing was right, we bought it. Loews owns and operates its own hotels, so it wasn’t going to stay a Loews hotel, and we thought putting it into the Hilton system made a lot of sense. We’re in the final stages of planning a renovation and, hopefully, we’ll be renovating the hotel and reconcepting some of the food and beverage outlets later this year.”
As for the future, Evans said that the company is working on a number of deals but nothing has been finalized, but he believes the focus will be on experiential hospitality.
“We’re not just building dormitories; we’re building places where people want to congregate and where the local community gathers,” he said. “One of our specialties is food and beverage, and I think it’s something that differentiates us from a lot of other hotel companies.”
He added, “As I mentioned before, a big priority of the company is to grow Saint Kate as a brand. Something else that growing on the experiential side is glamping, and that’s another area that we’ve been looking at some opportunities, and we’re going to be getting into that space very shortly as well.”
The company will also be looking to add hotels outside of the Midwest, where the majority of its portfolio of 16 hotels is primarily located.
“Another focus of ours is to get geographic diversity,” said Evans. “I wouldn’t pick on any one market, but maybe somewhere in the Sun Belt. We’re opportunistic and entrepreneurial, and that’s how we think about our growth.”
Did YOU Know?
Did you know that Marcus Hotels & Resorts originally launched the Baymont by Wyndham brand?
Evans explained: “Back in the early ‘70s, before select-service was a term, we started a brand that initially was called Budgetel. It was a higher-end brand than what the name implied, so it was changed to Baymont, which grew to pretty sizable brand. In 2004, we sold the brand to La Quinta.”
In 2006, Blackstone, which had acquired La Quinta, sold the Baymont brand name to Wyndham, then Cendant Hotel Group. America’s Best Franchising revived the Budgetel name in 2008.
