Downtown Stillwater hasn’t had a new hotel since 1995, when the Water Street Inn was built.

Now, two will be opening on Main Street within the next year and a half.

At 232 N. Main, the After Midnight Group plans to open a 64-room luxury boutique hotel, restaurant and cafe. The $16 million project also will include a three-story, 55,000-square-foot office building at Second and Mulberry streets and a three-level, 124-stall parking ramp behind the hotel.

The group is the developer of the Western-themed Cowboy Jack’s bar-restaurants and Minneapolis music venue the Cabooze.

At the south end of Main, the owner of the Joseph Wolf Brewery block has revived plans to convert the 116-year-old building into a boutique, 40-room hotel, restaurant and retail space; interior demolition is underway.

The two projects will be the first new hotel rooms in downtown since the Lowell Inn addition was completed in 2010, said community development director Bill Turnblad.

“The market dictates what is necessary,” Turnblad said. “Event-goers and visitors who would like to be in Stillwater need to book in surrounding communities because there just aren’t enough rooms to cover all the demand.”

The hotel on North Main, which is awaiting city approval, would be located between Johnny’s TV and Images of the Past and would extend back to Second and Mulberry streets. Developers plan to buy a city-owned parking lot on Mulberry; the former Associated Eye Care building on the site, owned by Gartner Studios, would also be purchased and demolished.

The hotel, called the Crosby, would feature a full-service 70-seat restaurant called the Dakotah, a cafe and bakery called the Boom and two outdoor eating areas, said Daniel Oberpriller, a spokesman for the project. Oberpriller is a principal at CPM Development, a sister company to the After Midnight Group. Related Articles Ex-slave who died in Stillwater in 1913 finally gets a headstone

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The After Midnight Group owns several Cowboy Jack’s, plus Cowboy Slim’s, Sally’s Saloon, the Cabooze and the Joint Bar; CPM developed the University of Minnesota DoubleTree by Hilton and University Inn.

GOOD TIME FOR DOWNTOWN

Oberpriller said the timing is right for a new hotel in downtown Stillwater: the new Brown’s Creek State Trail is expected to bring thousands of bicyclists into town each year; the new St. Croix River bridge south of Stillwater, which will divert truck traffic out of the downtown core, will open in the fall; a new event center, called JX Events, recently opened; and officials hope a massive ice castle — new to downtown this year — will continue to be built in Stillwater for the next few years.

“With those things in mind, in conjunction with where the financial markets are, we felt proposing a hotel was a good fit for that market,” Oberpriller said. “Please note: this is not a 140-room Hilton Garden Inn or anything like that. This is a 64-room unit boutique hotel. It’s a tailored use for a tailored city.”

The hotel will have a brick facade, and its size and height will “fit in nicely with the other buildings on the block,” he said.

The group plans to break ground in April and open in May 2018.

“It will be a social hotel,” Oberpriller said. “All of the rooms will be individually designed — unlike a Hilton where everything is the same. Stillwater is a localized community, and it’s a tourist destination.”

The Dakotah will be an all-American craft restaurant that will specialize in “small-batch localized food,” Oberpriller said. The restaurant will have 60 to 70 seats and a third-floor outside patio.

The three-level parking area would replace 35 city parking spaces — on site and on street — that would be lost due to the project. Of the parking area’s three levels, the first two would be accessible from Mulberry, the top level from Second.

The plan will be presented to the Stillwater City Council for its approval on Feb. 7, Turnblad said.

The hotel project on South Main Street was approved several years ago but development stalled due to financing problems, Turnblad said. “They needed to find a different group of investors and a different bank,” he said. Related Articles US judge blocks Postal Service changes that slowed mail

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Developer Corey Burstad did not return a phone call seeking comment, but Turnblad said the hotel should open this year. The city council approved $1.15 million in tax-increment funds for the project in June 2014.

“It’s an important building and it occupies a key location downtown, so we really want to see something succeed,” Turnblad said.

Chuck Dougherty, owner of the Water Street Inn, said he welcomes the competition. He said local banquet halls have lost weddings because blocks of rooms weren’t available for guests.

“With everything going on, with the bike trial and the bridge, there’s a need for rooms,” Dougherty said. “Are we going to be competing with each other in the middle of winter? Well, sure, but I think in the high season, there is definitely a need for more rooms.”