It’s official: after two-plus years of rumors, Ace Hotel has confirmed that its first Chicago property will open this fall in the Fulton Market District. The boutique hotel will bring new life to a former Italian-American cheesemaking factory at 311 North Morgan Street, just across the street from 1KFulton, Google’s Midwest headquarters.
Ace Hotel offered the first details about its West Loop location to Chicago this week, including a glimpse at a model room design and other amenities offered to guests and the general public.
Here’s what we learned: Ace Hotel Chicago will have 159 rooms designated as small, medium, double, or large; small rooms will be around 275 square feet and medium rooms just slightly larger at 290 square feet. Nine of the rooms will be suites ranging from 650 to 800 square feet.
In terms of food and beverage options, expect a large lobby bar, the first Stumptown Coffee Roasters café in the Midwest, and a ground-floor restaurant that will service several event spaces as well as guest rooms. Following suit with the brand’s other properties, Ace plans to partner with a yet unnamed regional chef to bring a local focus to its Chicago restaurant.
There will also be a seventh-floor rooftop bar and terrace open year-round with both indoor and outdoor spaces. The sixth floor will have meeting rooms. Count them among seven, multi-floor event spaces—more than you’ll find at any other Ace property—that will be open to everyone. “We're thrilled to be able to offer a space where people can gather, have a bite, and spark new ideas and conversations," says Ace Hotel Group partner and chief brand officer Kelly Sawdon. Musician clinics, art and technology festivals, film screenings, and community assemblies—these are the kinds of collaborative programming found at other Ace hotels that you'll likely find at the Chicago property.
And like other Ace hotels, we can look forward to a design that’s both laid-back and hyper cool. Led by LA-based Commune Design, the look and feel will pull cues from Chicago’s modernist history, nodding to greats like Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and László Moholy-Nagy with his New Bauhaus design. Mod rooms will have glossy wood-grain desks, marble walls and ceilings, and old-school turntables. Look for sawtooth skylights and oak parquet flooring in the first-floor event space as well as a sculpture garden and outdoor seating on the paved fifth-floor terrace, which will span 2,876 square feet.
Ace Hotel Chicago will be the next hotel to open in Fulton Market since the debut of Soho House Chicago in 2014. Rooms will likely start around $219 a night. No word yet on when Ace Hotel Chicago will begin taking reservations, though it could be as soon as this February.