A new hotel near Midway Airport could be ready to rise

Nine months after a ceremonial ground breaking, a new hotel could be ready to rise in the 6500 Block of South Cicero Avenue after foundation work is in place for a neighboring one story restaurant being constructed on the same site. The proposed three-story, 74-room hotel project will feature the new urban boutique brand Vīb. Derived from the word vibrant, the brand is the newest flag of Best Western Hotels and Resorts.

At this time, a building permit has only been released for the one story restaurant positioned at the corner of the 65th Street and Cicero Avenue, which will be home to a stand alone Panda Express with a drive through. The hotel would rise just to the south of it when construction begins on the reminder of the site.

The site for years has been an empty and abandoned car lot stretching almost the entire length of the block towards 66th Street. While a number of hotels have sprung up near Midway Airport since its complete overhaul in the 1990's, all of these recently built properties have been constructed in the adjacent suburb of Bedford Park, where a Cracker Jack factory gave way to construct a hotel complex in the otherwise almost exclusively industrial municipality. The hotel complex until now provided enough space to absorb the demand for any recent hotel construction, including a new Hyatt Place which opened within the last year.

As such, the City of Chicago surprisingly has had no major hotel flags serving the airport, a greatly missed opportunity for the collection of lucrative hotel taxes currently flowing to the neighboring suburb across the street. In fact, only one major hotel brand serving Midway Airport is presently located within city limits, an older five story building located next to Ford City Mall at 74th Place. This older property has undergone recent renovations and has changed flags three times since 2009; from a Four Points by Sheraton to a Clarion Hotel to presently a Quality Inn. The new Vīb Hotel represents an $8 million dollar investment and will potentially serve as a catalyst for future growth in the Cicero Avenue corridor.

• New 74-Room Boutique Hotel 'Vib' To Go Up Near Midway Airport [DNA Info]

• B&W Hotels and Resorts Chicago Vīb Breaks Ground [Best Western Hotels and Resorts]