Expansion underway at French Lick resorts in response to increased visitor counts

In fact, according to Chuck Franz, vice president of Cook Group, which is the parent company of French Lick Resort, the two hotels are currently at 97 percent occupancy on Saturday nights. Expansion, he said, was not only necessary, but a “no-brainer.”

“First, we needed the casino to get off the ground,” Franz said. “… Once that happened, our group sales team came to us and said they have enough contracts and businesses that, if we had more meeting and event space, they felt like we could do even better. The demand was there.” 

Construction is wrapping up on a 30,000-square-foot exhibition hall, which will give the French Lick Resort a facility dedicated only to exhibit space. Also in the works is the upcoming renovation of the former billiard and bowling pavilion at the West Baden Springs Resort, which officials hope will provide a new venue for weddings and other special events. The expansion projects are topped off with the increased seating capacity being added to both 1875: The Steakhouse and Hagen’s at The Donald Ross Course.

The 2018 projects come on the heels of a 2015 expansion that added 58,000 square feet of meeting space to the event center at French Lick Resort, bringing the resort-wide total of 165,000 square feet of customizable meeting and event space at Indiana’s largest privately owned facility for meeting space.

“As our group business continues to grow, we try to look for new activities and new amenities that we can offer. We’d love to have the opportunity for a group to host their event annually at the resort, and with that said, we try to find something new, whether it’s a new event location or a new recreational activity,” Director of Sales Adina Cloud said in a resort blog post. “As our group business continued to increase, and after looking at what groups were requesting and what we were missing, the renovation of the exhibition hall was our next step to be able to accommodate the size of the groups we now have coming to French Lick Resort.”

According to a study commissioned by Radius Indiana, which tracks tourism spending in the region, in 2016, more than $90 million was spent on tourism and travel in Orange County. A majority of those dollars were spent on lodging and food and beverages.

The exhibition hall will open as a 30,000-square-foot facility capable of containing 200 exhibits or booths 10-by-10 feet in size. The building is the same one that housed the Valley Links Golf and Activities Center and doubled as an indoor facility for golf, tennis and other sports. The ground-level building will be able to accommodate drive-in access. It also will be constructed to be accessible to other meeting spaces, as an escalator will be built to connect the exhibition hall to the event center to allow for ease of travel between exhibit space and meeting rooms.

“The building was essentially left alone during the original restoration, so it needed a facelift,” Franz said. “When group sales told us, if we had more space, we could sell more rooms, it was a no-brainer for us. In the first four weeks, our group sales team had sold 3,000 to 4,000 extra room nights.”

Down the road at the West Baden Springs Hotel, more work also is on the horizon. In addition to the replacement of the bridge near the hotel, the former billiard and bowling pavilion, which is situated on the West Baden Springs Hotel grounds to the south of the hotel, will be restored to its original grandeur about 100 years after it first opened on Christmas Day 1917. Construction will begin this fall, with the re-opening set for 2019.

One of its chief functions will be for weddings, adding a new option to the existing lineup of indoor and outdoor wedding settings. The multi-functional facility of more than 7,500 square feet can also be used for dinners, banquets or other special meetings.

The building was believed to be last functional in the late 1960s as the student union of Northwood Institute, which inhabited West Baden Springs Hotel at the time. Most of the decorative wall and ceiling elements on the interior are gone, as a result of exposure to the elements and decades of being uninhabited. But Conrad Schmitt Studios Inc. — the same contractor that guided some of the restoration of the West Baden and French Lick Hotels more than a decade ago — will again steer the renovation of the building, using old photos and some molding impressions from the existing structure to rebuild it in its original neoclassical style. 

“The first part of this is already under way,” Franz said, “and that’s work to raise the road, so it will hold the flooding near the pavilion. Once that is finished, we plan to refurbish it beyond its prior use as a bowling pavilion. It will be restored to elaborate showcase splendor. We want it to be the wedding destination of the Midwest.”

To keep pace with the ongoing influx of groups visiting French Lick Resort, plans are in the works that will likely include additional guest rooms conducive to the needs of group clients.

“That’s out on the horizon, with nothing definite,” Franz said. “But we do believe that once the exhibition hall is fully open, our sales team is going to come back ... and tell us we need more rooms. Business is growing. We’ve always approached this as a regional project, from the standpoint that this can be the central catalyst, but we’re targeting the region.

“While they’re here with us, they’re going to want to eat, to do things. Over the years it has been neat to watch and amazing, but we don’t want to stop.”

The expansion projects, Franz said, will add 50 to 100 new jobs for the region.

“The resort is 10 to 11 years old,” he said. “You’ve got to keep yourself fresh. That’s what you’re seeing here. We are continually trying to freshen ourselves up while adding amenities that will enhance the experience of our guests. It has been fun to watch, as the resort grows and the community responds to that growth. Folks want to eat, folks want to do things. We must respond and prepare for future growth.”