Milwaukee Hyatt's sale has to make chain happy

With the downtown Hyatt hotel now up for sale by its current owner, Milwaukee MECCA Partners headed by Milwaukee construction executive Gary Grunau, perhaps there is still hope for the property … and for Milwaukee’s downtown hotel business.

Until recently, when new carpeting was installed in its public areas apparently in anticipation of making the property more saleable, not much has been done to improve the 27-year-old, 483-room hotel. Even the Hyatt signage on the building’s exterior is several iterations behind the chain’s current brand identity. Compare Milwaukee’s Hyatt with any other downtown Hyatt and you’ll see how outdated it is. But as with most locally based downtown property owners, the key word is cheap. Do things as cheaply as possible in the hope of making the most money. That same mind-set is evident in the new Manpower headquarters being built downtown, also by Grunau.

You’d think that as Milwaukee gets left further and further behind in the dust of other similar-size cities, these local owners and developers would realize that attitude no longer cuts it. Perhaps with an outside investor, the Hyatt might finally be brought up to the high standards usually identified with the Hyatt name.