09.25.12

USA Today Travel – Downtown Lincoln’s Cornhusker to again become a Marriott

September 25, 2012 | For USA Today Travel by Barbara De Lollis | Original Article

Downtown Lincoln, Neb., will soon have a Marriott hotel again.

Downtown Lincoln, Nebraska’s 297-room prominent Cornhusker Hotel is about to get renovated and again fly the Marriott Hotels flag. Marriott had cut its ties with the hotel earlier this year.

Milwaukee-based Marcus Hotels & Resorts recently has agreed to buy the financially troubled hotel, and it has already taken over daily management. The company, a division of the publicly held Marcus Corp., has restored various landmark hotels such as the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City and the Hotel Phillips in Kansas City.

The Cornhusker was developed by Castle & Cook in 1983 on the site of another hotel.

The Cornhusker lobby.

The Cornhusker’s renovation, according to Marcus Hotels, will give the hotel a new lobby, newly designed guest rooms, newly revamped meeting space and new dining outlets.

The hotel, for instance, will get a MillerTime Pub & Grill, which serves 20 types of special burgers and beers, plus salads, soups and wings.

The company hired Charles Harper, the one-time general manager of the Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, as general manager. He’s coming from the company’s Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Mo.

“We believe we can make this distinctive hotel an even greater asset to the community and return the property to its former position as the social center of Lincoln,” Marcus Corporation CEO Gregory Marcus said in a press release.

The hotel has some catching up to do. According to TripAdvisor, the No. 1 and 2 hotels in town respectively are the New Victorian Suites (rates start at $73) and Embassy Suites (rates start at $160). The Cornhusker is ranked No. 21.

In terms of business travel potential, Lincoln is home to offices of companies such as Kawasaki, State Farm Insurance, Verizon, Pfizer, Novartis, Dell and Duncan Aviation.

Neither Marriott’s website nor the hotel’s website mention the affiliation yet.