Indy plans 22-story hotel

INDIANAPOLIS -- A 22-story luxury hotel and condominium tower is being proposed for a long-vacant spot just a block from the city's Monument Circle.\nPlans for the $75 million project were announced Monday by city officials. The tower -- at Illinois and Washington streets next to Circle Centre mall -- would have 220 hotel rooms and 24 condominiums.\n"It makes the city more attractive to more people, and that's good for everyone," Mayor Bart Peterson said. "If you look at a lot of other cities comparable to Indy, they'll have prominent five-star hotel of this size."\nThe developers are working with Conrad Hotels, which operates the Waldorf Towers in New York City and has hotels worldwide.\nPeterson said the hotel would cater to customers of the city's arts scene and visitors who come for events such as the U.S. Grand Prix.\nThe city-owned property has been vacant since 1990, and Peterson called it "a piece of unfinished business."\nConstruction could begin this fall, with work completed by the end of 2005.\n"That's the best undeveloped parcel left in town," said Chuck Cagann, president of Mansur Real Estate Services, one of the project's developers.\nThe tower would be connected to the downtown shopping mall and offer condos averaging $400,000 to $500,000 per unit, along with a restaurant, gym and day spa, other street-level retail space and 159 parking spaces.\nExecutives at the nearby Canterbury Hotel have raised doubts about whether the city has enough business to support another top-level hotel. But Peterson said he was confident the Canterbury would not be hurt.\n"If we believed it would hurt their business, that would be evidence that there wasn't enough of a market for this hoztel," he said.\nThe city long has struggled to fill the site, with plans for a 25-story apartment building falling through last year.