PROGRESS: 'The golden age' of Okoboji hospitality lives on at the Inn Hotel

But first, a disclaimer: The Inn Hotel is not the original Inn, the beloved Okoboji lakeside destination that opened in 1896 and was demolished last year. 

"We've had some confusion if we're affiliated with The Inn -- we're not affiliated with The Inn," Steffes said last summer. "It was just an ode, an homage, to the original Inn." 

The 38-room hotel at 15 Dam Road -- about a five-minute walk from the Arnolds Park amusement park -- opened May 24. 

Even though it's not the same hotel, Steffes and her husband, Marc, have done a lot to make their independently owned Inn reminiscent of the old Inn -- including the pair of arches on the hotel's portico, evoking the turn-of-the-century look of the old Inn, which also had arches at its poolside entrance.

They've taken to calling the 1910s and '20s "the golden age" of Okoboji-area leisure and hospitality, thus the period theme of the hotel. The jaunty style is visible from the exterior -- the striped window awnings in particular point to an earlier time. 

"That was the time for self-indulgence, and entertaining was, I keep saying, an art form," Steffes said. 

Perhaps the crown jewel of the new Inn is The Beach Club, a bar and restaurant evoking the moody look of a tropical 1920s hotel restaurant with its vintage-style furniture, fixtures, old photos, swing music and parquet wood floors. 

True to its 1920s form, you don't have to be a hotel guest to have a cocktail or dinner at The Beach Club -- in those days, hotel restaurants were common gathering places even for people who didn't actually rent a room at the hotel. Steffes said the couple wants to cultivate "a social club atmosphere" in The Beach Club. 

Steffes, who served as the hotel's interior designer, paid attention to details when choosing its fixtures, furniture, decor and numerous potted plants. She's especially proud of a large, decorative glass light fixture hanging above a stairway. 

"I love that light, I found that in Arizona where I was vacationing -- it's 1960s Miami Beach," she said. 

Marc Steffes, whose firm, Steffes Companies, was responsible for building the hotel, said the timing was right to open a nice hotel a fraction of a mile from the Arnolds Park amusement park (the firm is also in charge of considerable ongoing construction at the park). 

"That was kind of the driving force behind why we built the hotel in the first place, was just to kind of support the vision for the Roof Garden, which is a year-round venue," Mercedes Steffes said. 

The newly renovated Majestic Pavilion at Arnolds Park, a popular venue for weddings and other large gatherings, complements the hotel well. 

"They basically have weddings 10 months out of the year," Marc Steffes said while sitting at the hotel's pool-adjacent Cabana Bar. "Every weekend from here on out, there are wedding groups at the hotel." 

And what is a hotel without a pool to lounge around? The hotel's 4-foot-deep, second-floor pool, which Marc Steffes referred to as a "dipping pool," is a bright and shiny affair in an outside deck area. 

Because neither Steffes had a background as a hotelier and the hotel is operated independently, they brought in a manager with 20 years' experience running hotels to keep things ship-shape. 

"We are not managing, we are owners, but we do not manage," Mercedes Steffes said. "We obviously are doing a lot of up-front managing and helping and getting everything going, but the plan is to kind of step back."