The faithful will be making their annual pilgrimage to Mecca on the Milwaukee this August, and it’s shaping up to be one heckuva Mecca.
Move over, Milwaukee. There’s a new horse moving in: The Iron Horse.
The Iron Horse Hotel is scheduled to open in Milwaukee in July of this year, just prior to the grand opening of the new Harley-Davidson Museum.
I recently toured the building site and was suitably impressed, as Tim Dixon, the owner and developer, and Brigette Breitenbach of Breitenbach Weiss, the firm handling the public relations for the hotel, gave me all the details. They spent a fact-filled hour giving me all the information on the hotel - from the history to the upcoming grand opening and beyond.
Tim Dixon is a real estate developer who built and owns the Iron Horse Hotel. He’s well versed on both sides of the hotel coin. He’s a demanding business traveler, and he’s a HOG™ member. As he says it, “I’m my own target audience.” Tim is the proud owner of a Harley-Davidson Custom Road King and travels frequently in connection with his development company.
This article will, I think, answer all your questions and, I hope, some you may not have thought of. I’ll be doing at least a couple more articles on the hotel over the coming couple of months, and giving you plenty of photos as it progresses.
Hotel Information
The first boutique hotel in the industry anywhere in the United States, the Iron Horse will appeal to both sophisticated business travelers and to bikers. It will have amenities for the most discerning and demanding business sophisticate. (That’s in yuppie-speak. In biker-speak, it’s amenities up the wazoo.)
In addition to bikers, the Iron Horse Hotel is also targeting savvy business travelers looking for the less impersonal business hotels. Milwaukee is home to a number of large corporations including Manpower, GE Healthcare Technology, Rockwell Automation, and Kohl’s Corporation. It follows that there’s a steady stream of business visitors year-round who need appropriate food and lodging. The Iron Horse intends to provide it. Says Tim Dixon, “To me, a boutique hotel is the perfect marriage of entertainment and real estate development.”
The hotel will be staffed and managed by Desires Hotels, a Miami-based firm with a stellar record of managing independently-branded modern boutique hotels, including the Strand Ocean Drive, the Hotel Astor, the Sagamore, and Circa 39, all in Miami Beach; the Hotel Mela in New York; the Water and Beach Club in San Juan; and the Glenn Hotel in Atlanta.
To quote Raul Leal, president of Desires Hotels, the Iron Horse Hotel “appeals to customers looking for one-of-a-kind architectural and interior design, personalized service and an experiential stay.” According to Doug Carrillo, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Desires, the Iron Horse “is at the forefront of a travel segment no one in the industry is addressing today…”
Dixon emphasizes that the Iron Horse is not a biker hotel, but a boutique hotel that has special amenities and facilities for higher-end bikers. Dixon’s original plan was simply a nice hotel, but things have a way of insinuating themselves into one’s plans.
Right now Dixon is experiencing his share of challenges, but he’s also had Lady Luck riding pillion from time to time. The poured-aluminum wall sculptures were made by the free pour method. In plain English this means taking a bucket of molten aluminum and dumping it onto the floor. It’s left to cool and harden without any working whatsoever, and whatever it comes out is what’s hung on the wall. In the sample room I looked at, one of the free pour wall sculptures had prophetically taken on the shape of a horse’s head. Now is that karma, or what?
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