SIOUX CITY -- Amy and Amrit Gill, founders of Restoration St. Louis, had a vision to give Sioux City a premiere historic downtown hotel that would be the "heartbeat" of the community. That vision was realized with with the renovation of The Warrior Hotel into the city's first Marriott Autograph Collection hotel.
The main lobby of the Warrior Hotel is shown in September. The historic downtown Sioux City hotel has earned AAA’s Four Diamond Hotel Rating, considered one of the most known and respected trademarks in the travel industry.
The 10-story Art Deco-style hotel welcomed its first guests in early September.
The Gills said they put their focus into completing The Warrior before the adjacent Davidson Building, which has 56 hotel rooms and 22 upscale apartments.
"We weren't really supposed to open anyway until the end of the year, but we decided to prioritize," Amy Gill said during a Sept. 4 media tour.
Amrit Gill said memories will be made once again in the spacious ballroom, which has chandeliers that remind Gill of "upside-down wedding cakes" and Greek key, a decorative border that was carried over from the lobby.
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"Ultimately, these buildings are repositories of the community. There will be new stories that will be written," he said.
The Warrior sat vacant for more than three decades, before Lew Weinberg partnered with Restoration St. Louis to redevelop the 200,000 square feet of combined space in The Warrior and the Davidson building into a 148-room hotel and 22 luxury apartments.
Built in 1930, The Warrior later fell on hard times and closed in 1976. Since the late 1990s, the boarded-up structure had been red-tagged by the city for building code violations.
Working in association with BSI Constructors, Inc., FEH Architects, and Checkmate Design, Restoration St. Louis restored the original terra cotta ornamentation and brick exterior of the buildings, including the infamous Warrior icons and ornate buffalo heads. The sweeping grandeur of the two-story marble staircase, along with its unique plaster detail work and ornamental railings, have also been authentically restored.
Black, gray, gold and hues of red and green can be found throughout the hotel, as well as items that pay homage to Iowa's birds.
"When they wrote about it, they talked about how it was moody," Amy Gill said of The Warrior. "It was dark. It was lots of red and dark colors, so we wanted to take off of that and do a modern interpretation of what that would look like."
The hotel also features a six-lane bowling alley -- War Eagle Lanes -- a pool/ sauna, Two Finches Spa and The Crown, a rooftop bar, which will open in the spring.
Lighting behind the bar in Woodbury's American Steakhouse changes colors. It's one of a number of high-tech updates. In the ballroom, projectors and screens drop down with the push of a button. The hotel also has a pre-function space, business and exercise centers and commercial space on the first floor.
Amy Gill said knowing what made the structures so significant to Sioux City residents helps "bring the building back to life in an even more authentic way."
The renovation project, which began in Feb. 2019, started out with an estimated cost of $56 million based on preliminary drawings, but that figure rose to $73 million, largely due to construction cost inflation. The Iowa Economic Development Authority awarded the project more than $11.3 million in historic preservation tax credits; and the Sioux City Council agreed to guarantee $16.5 million for it.
The Warrior Hotel is nearing completion in downtown Sioux City. Full of granite and marble, the hotel is part of the Marriott Autograph Collection with a bird theme.
