There wasn’t just one reason the entire La Quinta executive team left the hot and dry Texas weather for a windy and rainy day in Chicago on Tuesday. There were 50 million reasons. That was roughly the cost to development the brand’s newest and highest profile location just outside Chicago’s Loop, in the heart of the city’s financial district.

CEO Wayne Goldberg, Chief Development Officer Raj Trivedi, Chief Operating Officer Angelo Lombardi, Chief Marketing Officer Julie Cary and Chief Financial Officer Temple Weiss were in town for the grand-opening celebration and ribbon cutting. The nine-story, 241-room hotel actually opened in early April, but the five chiefs spent some quality time showing off their new corporate-owned hotel to local clients, vendors and media at an evening reception.

The property, an adaptive reuse of the Jewish Federation Building built in 1958 and two newly constructed wings, includes 23 suites, an indoor pool, business center, onsite guest laundry, almost 4,000-square feet of retail space, 2,250-square feet of meeting space, a green roof among several sustainable initiatives and offers the brand’s free Bright Side Breakfast.

What follows are some highlights of a 45-minute chat with the always affable crew from La Quinta.

How important is this location?

Wayne: It’s an anchor. We believe this is a brand enhancer at a minimum. It’s a high profile location. We have $200,000 a key invested in this asset. It’s one of highest development cost properties that we have in the system. It represents our commitment to the brand.

Raj: Regardless of the timing and the current environment and economic conditions, you can see how committed we are and how firmly we believe the future of the brand is going to be highly successful. This is an encouragement to the franchise community. This is the entry of La Quinta as a new construction hotel in a big metropolis. We are following this with a new construction property in downtown Houston (a franchised location).

Wayne: This started several years ago with opening of the new La Quinta, actually the very first La Quinta, which we tore down and built, a 350-room property in downtown San Antonio. We built a brand new hotel in downtown New Orleans. We have a downtown hotel in Austin (TX), we’re in Manhattan (a franchise). If you look at the number of development projects we’ve done in urban environments, this is just a further enhancement of what we started many years ago.

Raj: This is really the next phase, the next anticipated phase of our growth. We are in key highway markets, key business district markets, airport markets. The next phase is to put ourselves in key urban markets.

Angelo: The reception from Corporate America has been huge with this hotel. We have had companies that wouldn’t normally add a new partner midyear adding us without a second thought.

Temple: When we built this hotel we had been scouting locations, we’d been talking to the Jewish Federation folks for about two years about this location because we felt so strongly about it…the fact you’re within literally hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space. The folks that come into the city, the people passing by our logo and flag and location…you couldn’t get any better from the corporate side, plus leisure, you’re a block from the theatre district, blocks from the beach, Grant Park, museums. It really is a great package. We’re the only large scale limited-service hotel that services this clientele in this area.

What’s the significance of the retail space on the first floor?

Wayne: There are things we did a little differently here. What we looked at was the amount of square footage on the street level. On the one hand we didn’t want to do what a lot of our competitors have done in urban markets…You see it, you go into a downtown environment and the lobby is often on the second or third floor and the retail space is street level. We didn’t want to give up that retail space on the other hand, but we didn’t want to put the lobby off the main level. Rather than just move everything up, we left the lobby on the main level (and moved the breakfast area to the second floor), but we also carved out plenty of retail space. We’ve got three retail outlets we are leasing (Argo Tea Company is already open, a cupcake shop is close to opening and a Halstead Street Deli just signed for the third spot). All three will be nice additions for this hotel. We’re not in the food-service business, but this facility will offer all the amenities of a full-service hotel.

Temple: And all three are good local companies.

Does this location have all the standard features La Quinta offers elsewhere?

Raj: Generally select services going into urban markets compromise with some features in their hotel. We are offering the complete package here: a swimming pool, business center, free deluxe breakfast, exercise facility and at least the minimum square footage of rooms.

Wayne: The square footage is significant, because in an urban environment that is the one compromise often expected by the consumer. In downtown environments you really are restricted to the square footage of that facility and often see a much smaller footprint.

Murry Cathlina, executive vice president design & construction: The average room is 320 square feet. Some suites are 550 square feet. We have several standards rooms that are nearly 400 square feet; we don’t rent those as a suite. We have a variety of different styles.

How were you able to build this for $200,000 per key, with all the standard features and expect to be profitable?

Wayne: A lot of value engineering. We knew we had to have a larger facility. The footprint of the original building would not accommodate the number of rooms we needed to get the room count we needed, so we did the two additions. Anything short of 230-240 rooms wouldn’t have worked.

Raj: The biggest cost factor for the urban hotel is the f&b component and we don’t have that and that helps us a great deal in reducing operating and construction costs. The second thing is our hotels are efficient and guest driven, keeping in mind guest needs and what their desires are. We’re not doing flashy looking for the heck of it, we’re about being modest, yet elegant and that’s how we do the savings.

How many rooms did the two wings add to the project?

Murray: They totaled about 200 rooms.

Wayne: It would have led to a much higher cost per key without them and wouldn’t have justified this.

How did La Quinta finance this project?

Temple: Actually we funded the initial purchase of this building through cash on hand. Subsequently we did a small piece of financing on the building after the fact, but we’ve been funding it all through cash.

How and why the green roof?

Wayne: We’ve planted 3,000 square feet of material on the roof. It’s basically a garden. Twenty-five percent of the roof will be covered with green material. It wasn’t a mandate. It was something the city would like to see, plus what we thought our obligations were. It’s the right thing to do, especially in an urban environment where greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions are an issue. We’ve incorporated a number of things in this facility beyond the roof. We also have a recycling program here. The gas, electric, water and waste are all monitored on a regular basis and reports are driven back to management. So we know what the consumption of energy is.

How’s business been so far?

Wayne: The market is obviously not where we’d like it to be. This market is being impacted like most markets in the country. The first full month of operations the property ran at $125 (ADR), roughly 40-percent occupancy, which in reality is not a bad start for a brand new hotel this size in a location like this.

Angelo: We will exceed last month’s numbers (in the second month).

Wayne: We’re finding the middle of week is really encouraging; we’re selling 175-220 rooms on an average Tuesday. Tonight I asked and we’re going to sell 212 or so rooms.

How about the company as a whole?

Wayne: Things aren’t getting any better as far as the economy, things continue to muddle along, no question. We continue to feel the effects of that in our industry, in our segment. But the realities are no different that what we said in Hawaii (at the annual conference): We continue to outpace our competitors, growing our share for the 19^th month in a row. Our guest satisfaction has increased for well over 16 months in a row. We’re going to open 80-plus hotels this year. And that’s a very solid number.

Raj: In May we’ve signed north of 30 contracts.

Wayne: The pipeline is over 255 today. It’s growing since Hawaii and we’ve opened 10 or more already.

Is the worst over?

Wayne: What we’ve seen is some stabilization. If we’re not at the bottom, we’re very close. The decline has tapered off.

Raj: We’ve seen encouraging signs on weekends. Leisure is coming back. It’s the trend of 2001. Very encouraging.