Drury Plaza Hotel open for eclipse business; conference center set to open soon

Cape Girardeau’s newest hotel held a soft opening late last month. But there’s nothing soft about it now.

Every room in the Drury Plaza Hotel Cape Girardeau Conference Center is booked today as people flock to Cape Girardeau to view Monday’s total solar eclipse.

The eight-story hotel has 168 rooms.

Dennis Vollink, president of Drury Southwest Inc., the project’s developer, said Sundays typically are slow days in the hotel business. But not today.

“It is 100 percent because of the solar eclipse,” he said.

“All of our hotels down to Sikeston, Missouri, are sold out,” Vollink added.

The hotel near the Route K interchange on Interstate 55 opened July 21 with little fanfare. Vollink said it was “a soft opening.”

He said, “We did not take a lot of reservations for a week or two.”

Vollink said that allowed the staff to ease into the hotel’s operations.

Construction work soon will be finished on the adjacent 29,000-square-foot conference center, Vollink said. It is scheduled to open the week of Aug. 28, he said.

The facility will have 14,000 square feet of space in the main

conference room.

The center also will have breakout rooms bordering the main meeting space, Vollink said.

In addition, the hotel itself contains two meeting rooms, he said.

Vollink said the conference center can accommodate 1,000 people in a theater-style format and 800 to 850 people in a dinner-style setting.

A new restaurant, The Southerner, will open at the site in early September, Vollink said.

The entire development amounts to about a $40 million investment, he said.

The conference center, a public-private partnership, accounts for about $11 million of that price tag, according to Vollink.

Cape Girardeau’s city government and Drury Southwest have partnered on the project, along with hotel owners in the William Street and I-55 area who volunteered to pay 1 percent of their hotel revenue for up to 20 years to support the development.

Cape Girardeau Mayor Harry Rediger welcomed the project.

“No. 1, the Drury Plaza Hotel gives us a premier hotel along I-55,” he said.

“To me, it is a definite win for the city,” he said, adding the meeting space will allow the community to host sizable conventions.

The Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau will help market the conference center for conventions and other events.

CVB executive director Brenda Newbern said the center will be able to handle both large- and medium-sized conferences.

“I can’t wait to see it,” Newbern said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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