Developers are planning to bring a hotel and grocery store to the Far South Side neighborhood of Pullman.
A venture led by Chicago investor Andre Garner asked for a city grant to build a 101-room Hampton by Hilton hotel at 111th Street and Doty Avenue, Crain’s reported. Cleveland-based Yellow Banana applied for the same grant to redevelop a Save A Lot grocery store just south of Pullman.
Each developer applied for $5 million through the Chicago Recovery Plan program, which is partially funded by local recovery money from the American Rescue Plan Act that was passed last year.
The proposed developments would add to projects in and around Pullman and come a year after the debut of the Pullman National Monument as a tourist attraction.
Garner’s Pullman Hotel Group plans to build the $20 million hotel on a vacant lot behind a retail building at the corner of East 111th Street and Doty Avenue. Garner said the hotel would meet demand from visitors to the historic site, which organizers expect to rise four or five times to as many as 300,000 people each year.
“There are three major highways running through the South Side and bringing in people from all around the nation, and no place for folks to stay (with a brand) that they’d recognize,” Garner told the outlet.
South of Pullman, Yellow Banana is asking to use the grant to buy a property at East 130th Street and Eberhart Avenue in Altgeld Gardens to build a 10,000-square-foot Save A Lot. The store would add to a list of Save A Lot locations Yellow Banana is upgrading in underserved areas of Chicago such as the South and West sides.
Yellow Banana co-founder Michael Nance said in a statement that the grocery store would help eliminate a food desert for residents who “have for far too long lacked access to healthy, affordable food.”
Alderman Anthony Beale, who represents the 9th Ward where the projects would be located, supports both projects, calling them “much-needed additions to the Far South Side.”
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— Victoria Pruitt