South Dakota Developer Plans Six-Story Hotel in Garment District

By Kevin Collison

A 149-room hotel is planned for a parking lot at Ninth and Wyandotte, next door to the historic Savoy Hotel which reopened last year as a 21C Museum Hotel.

Lloyd Cos. of Sioux Falls, SD, is planning the $28 million, six-story project, its first venture into the Kansas City market.

Luke Jessen, development manager for Lloyd, said the family-owned firm has been in business in Sioux Falls for 50 years. It specializes in multi-family, hotel and commercial projects.

In recent years, Lloyd has branched out to do projects in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City, Iowa.

The Kansas City hotel is being developed for Cambria Hotels, part of the Choice Hotels Group.

“This is a market they identified as a growth opportunity and asked us to take on a project in Kansas City,” Jessen said.

He said the firm hopes to break ground by late winter and be ready to open in Spring 2021.

At this point, it is not planning to seek any tax incentives or other public financial assistance for the project.

The hotel would be built on this parking lot at Ninth and Wyandotte, the red-brick historic Savoy Hotel is in the background to the right.

The drawings submitted to the City Planning Department indicate the hotel will also include 3,600 square feet of retail space and parking for 57 vehicles.

Jessen said the ground level will include retail space along with a jump-lobby for the hotel and parking.

In addition to being next door to the Savoy, the new hotel is one block from a planned 13-story Hyatt House hotel at Ninth and Broadway.

No construction timetable has been established for the Hyatt development, although it has been approved for tax incentive assistance.

The planned Cambria Hotel also is coming at a time when downtown Kansas City is experiencing a surge of hotel construction, including the scheduled opening of the 800-room Loews Kansas City Convention Hotel next spring.

In an interview with CityScene KC last winter, Jason Fulvi, the new president and CEO of VisitKC, said the downtown Kansas City hotel market was “saturated.”