CARMEL — A long-planned boutique hotel opened Thursday in Carmel's growing City Center.
Hotel Carmichael is a six-story, 122-room hotel with 5,000 square feet of meeting space that features a new French restaurant and the soon-to-open Feinstein Cabaret.
The plan has been in the works for more than 15 years, according to the city, to build a unique boutique hotel that serves tourists, business travelers and local residents seeking an original experience.
"This new hotel will serve the city, its residents, our performing arts community and our growing family of corporate headquarters who have told me over and over that they want more options when bringing in clients, employees and potential customers," Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard said. "For years, we tried to share our vision and attract a hotel developer to invest in City Center, but they were all focused on the need to be where a high volume of traffic was flowing."
Plans for the hotel date back to the late 1990s when Brainard, city councilors and the Carmel Redevelopment Commission began to implement the mayor's vision for a new downtown to be built on 88 acres of land acquired by the city. The idea was to have a new downtown that was built as a more urban, sustainable and walkable corridor.
"We have many wonderful hotels along the Meridian Corridor and they are often booked solid with business travelers, sports teams and leisure travelers who wish to spend time in Carmel, Hamilton County and all of the Indianapolis area," Brainard said. "But we were looking for something different, something unique for our central walkable core."
The city's partner in City Center, Pedcor, began construction on the project in 2006. In 2014, six new City Center buildings were announced, most of which have now opened or are nearing completion along the Monon Greenway.
Construction on Hotel Carmichael began in 2018 and was originally scheduled to open in spring 2020 but the opening was pushed back by delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
