Record Swap owner Bob Diener, at his shop in Urbana’s Lincoln Square, says his business has improved threefold since he moved it to the mall from Race Street just before the pandemic began in early 2020.
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URBANA — With the long-awaited revival of Urbana’s historic downtown hotel seemingly around the corner, officials are excited to see what economic benefits it can bring for the rest of the city.
Encouraged, too, are the owner, manager and businesses of the adjoined Lincoln Square Mall, to see its companion in the heart of Urbana come back to life.
“The hotel’s nearing completion in the not-too-distant future, so we see a lot of positives,” Lincoln Square Mall owner Jim Webster said. “We might develop more tenants that will have some kind of symbiotic relationship with the hotel.
“I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out, but I think it’s going to help foot traffic, and also help our food court.”
A 1924 picture of the original Urbana-Lincoln Hotel, soon to be the Hotel Royer.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll, with stay-at-home orders and safety concerns reducing revenue for mall tenants and supply-chain disruptions delaying shipping of critical equipment for the hotel.
Just before the holiday shopping season, Lincoln Square tenants reported improved sales figures and foot traffic, and at least two businesses will soon be added to the mall’s directory.
And the Urbana City Council will likely grant a second extension to Hotel Royer’s construction deadline, giving developers until Aug. 31, 2023, to finish their renovation of the former Urbana-Lincoln and Landmark Hotel.
A 2020 aerial view of Lincoln Square Mall, center, and the attached Urbana Landmark Hotel, on its top-right corner.
The council is set to vote on the amended agreement Monday, but indicated broad support at its last meeting.
“This is a particularly wonderful point to be at, to see how close we are to actually bringing this vision to a reality and to restoring this hotel to the destination that it was,” Mayor Diane Marlin said at last Monday’s committee-of-the-whole meeting.
The city has committed to finance $5.5 million of the hotel through a bond, and plans to pay it off through tax increment financing on the property, local taxes and a soon-to-be-created boutique hotel/motel tax.
Shoppers at the Idea Store at Lincoln Square in Urbana on Thursday, Nov.17, 2022.
The bond won’t be issued until the hotel gets its certificate of occupancy, all of its financing for the cost of the project and final approval for the hotel to be part of Hilton’s Tapestry Collection.
The city has been burned before in this area — the hotel’s previous owner, Xiao Jin Yuan, had to return $1 million in TIF funds to Urbana after he didn’t reopen the hotel’s restaurant and conference center.
“I’m very proud of that agreement, because one of our goals in negotiating this was to protect the public investment in this project as much as possible,” Marlin said.
A recent picture of the new signage on Hotel Royer.
‘It’s like a little time capsule’
Lincoln Square Mall wasn’t Record Swap’s first choice for a new location after moving from Race Street in Urbana. But it’ll likely be its final resting place, 42-year owner Bob Diener said.
“Business has been really good for us ever since we moved here,” Diener said, roughly triple the business as at the Race Street location. “I think it’s the foot traffic, and so many more people see us. Everyone knows who we are.”
It sneaked in just a few months before the pandemic struck, and the shutdown wasn’t too hard: Diener said the stay-at-home order gave a lot of time to move in the rest of its records.
When the pandemic set in, “we didn’t really lose any tenants, so to speak,” mall owner Webster said. “But it definitely affected the sales. Now, we’re signing quite a few leases. I’d say things are looking up.”
Two businesses — Casablanca Bazar, which sells Moroccan goods, and Volo Internet and Tech — will open their mall locations in early December, he said. Three of the four remaining spaces have significant interest and leases are “probably going to happen,” manager Hannah Smith said.
Lincoln Square is going through improvements of its own, redoing entrances with additional lighting, adding stairways and putting in a new elevator. Next step: more public messaging.
“The social media thing we’re really developing, we’re hoping it’ll translate into more U of I students becoming aware of the mall. That’s one of our target groups,” Webster said. “Improved communication is the goal.”
University of Illinois senior Sid Veeravalli agrees that some targeted marketing could do the mall some good.
“Even on weekends, it’s busier than normal, but not as busy as it could be,” Veeravalli said. “A lot of the advertising is through word of mouth.”
Veeravalli, who is in the UI School of Art and Design, said he goes to the Urbana mall about every other week, mostly for supplies from the Art Coop and IDEA Store.
“It’s nice here; it’s like a little time capsule,” he said. “It’s a good place to find inspiration.”
The IDEA Store, a nonprofit arts-and-crafts outlet featuring donated supplies, just went through one of its best sales months ever, Assistant Manager Sarah Meadows said. The store relocated to Lincoln Square about four years ago after splitting off from the Champaign Urbana Schools Foundation.
“Business has gone back to pre-COVID levels for sure,” she said.
“I would like to see more retail outlets on the first floor here,” Record Swap’s Diener said. “I’ve been telling Jim for years. It’s not your traditional mall; I think it has great potential.”
Idea Store assistant manager Sarah Meadows, right, talks about its location at Lincoln Square in Urbana, left.
‘Generation of memories’
The last 20 years have brought little but ownership turnover and trouble for the former Urbana-Lincoln Hotel, which opened in 1923.
“That hotel was an iconic part of downtown for the past 100 years, good or bad. It was always there, and always a subject of conversation,” Marlin said.
The hotel was bought by Carson Pirie Scott & Co. in 1965, then sold to the Jumer Hotel chain in the 1970s and cycled through various owners in the 2000s.
Previous owner Yuan put the Landmark Hotel up for sale in 2015 and closed it in 2016. Several bidders put down offers and backed out in the late 2010s, after failing to reach agreements with the city on the amount of tax incentives they’d receive to renovate it.
In 2020, Crystal Lake-based Icon Hospitality bought the property. It later promised to rename the building the Hotel Royer after prolific Urbana architect Joseph Royer, who designed the hotel, Urbana High School, the Champaign County Courthouse, the Urbana Country Club and the former Lincoln Lodge, among others.
Until its decline, Marlin said, the hotel “was the place people went to celebrate the best days of their lives” — weddings, honeymoons and anniversaries, birthdays, proms and graduations.
“There are generations of memories here, and when we were trying to find a developer to take on this project, one of the things we stressed is there’s a lot of personal interest in this building,” she said.
The path to reopening hasn’t been easy. Working on a building nearing its 100th birthday, “you find all kinds of problems,” said Joseph Prior, who oversees hotel operations for Marquis Ventures and Icon Hospitality. “When you have a hotel that’s just been sitting there and you try to revise it, it’s very challenging. Everything’s broken.”
A recent picture of the new signage on Hotel Royer.
That’s partially why the city’s investment is so critical, Prior said. Previous estimates on the renovation have ranged from $15 million to $20 million.
“We don’t know what’s going to be the final (price) tag,” he said. “We keep opening walls and keep finding things.”
Delayed shipping times on equipment, like hot water systems and rooftop HVAC units, were the reason for Icon Hospitality’s most recent extension request.
“All the lead times used to be within weeks; now we’re talking months, if the equipment is even existing or available,” Prior said.
The Hotel Royer’s progress is now visible to the naked eye. Demolition is basically complete, the 131 guest rooms nearly all have plumbing and electrical, and developers are in the final stretches of fixing the parking lot and finishing the exterior details, Prior said.
Signs are up, and the original 1923 building is now lined with dark brown trim. The 1982 addition has a lighter tan on its edges.
Many of the memorable qualities of the hotel’s interior, like the grand ballroom’s wooden floor and its chandeliers, will stay. But the pool will be redone and bedrooms will be brought up to modern standards.
The eight-month extension is just to be safe, Prior said: Developers are targeting a May 2023 opening date.
The hotel’s biggest-ever renovation concluding in its centennial wasn’t lost on Alderman James Quisenberry.
“I’ve lived in this community since 1989, I certainly have a lot of memories of great events and dinners and get-togethers at this hotel,” he said. “I will look forward again to it becoming part of the core of Urbana, where events happen, where people gather, where people celebrate.”
