If you’ve been reading our blog for a while and haven’t realized it by now, we love staying at interesting hotel properties. Sometimes, that only means that we’ll stay at a chain hotel that has some interesting features, like this Courtyard by Marriott that’s located on a river and has weekend parties where you can rent tubes to go for a float. But more often, we’re looking for a place that’s not your usual cookie-cutter hotel. We’ve stayed in hotels that used to be banks, like this one in Asheville, NC, and this hotel in Chicago, which used to be a life insurance building.
When I was looking for a hotel in St. Paul, MN, I knew where we were going to stay once I found out that there was a hotel in what used to be the Custom House/Post Office building. Even better, it was a Hyatt. But instead of being a Grand Hyatt or Hyatt Regency, this property is a Hyatt Place.
Hyatt Place St. Paul/Downtown
180 Kellogg Blvd. East
Saint Paul, Minnesota
The hotel is a Category 2 World of Hyatt property and we could book the room for just 8,000 Hyatt points per night. This is a great deal considering that paying in cash would have set us back by $462.90. By redeeming our points for this stay, we were able to get a solid redemption value of 2.89 cents per point.
When arriving at the hotel, you go through the main entrance to the building. There are additional living spaces in the building, so it’s necessary to ring the front desk and get buzzed in until you have a room key for the doors.
Upon entering, the hotel lobby is located off to the left. The shared entrance has some seating areas and posters telling about the history of the building.
Lobby
The Hyatt Place lobby is a large open space with plenty of natural light from all the windows. The check-in desks are to the right. 
There are plenty of places to sit and the designers have used the old doors from the building as dividers to break up the space into smaller sections, which I found to be a charming touch. You’ll find old doors all throughout the property (there were apparently a lot of doors in the Custom House).
There’s also a lobby bar which had a few guests on each night of our stay. There are plenty of other places to grab a drink within walking distance downtown so it’s understandable that it’s not very busy.
The back of the main floor is reserved for the breakfast room. There are many tables, but all of them fill up quickly in the morning. All guests get free breakfast at the Hyatt Place, so the food does go quickly.
Hotel Room
Even though we arrived around noon, we were given a room right away, on the 4th floor. The guest rooms are mainly on the exterior of the hotel, with the inside reserved for meeting space and the elevators.
When we walked into the room, we were shocked to see the size of the room, which appeared even larger due to the extremely high ceilings (we guesstimated them to be at least 15 feet tall). The curtains were motorized and controlled by a switch on the wall, as there would be no way to move them on your own.
The bathroom has a typical setup, with a single sink and a large shower stall. It did pass the leak test as no water ended up on the bathroom floor after taking a shower.
Hotel Public Spaces (Pool & Gym)
We spent some time exploring the hotel, as the hallways were extremely interesting. The outside halls with room access were designed to match the rooms. However, the designers left much of the original tile on the inside hallways. It reminded me of a high school.
There’s plenty of space to fill, so there are chairs all around the area. Note the additional doors hung on the wall for decoration. I also loved the light fixtures used in these areas.
As is often found in repurposed buildings, there are a few of these staircases to nowhere.
There’s a large room on one floor which houses the gym. For such a large space, there aren’t a ton of machines. HotelGyms.com rates it a “Poor Gym,” citing a focus on cardio machines and limited equipment. 
The thing that surprised me the most was when I found the indoor pool. It was below freezing outside, and I didn’t bring my swim trunks to Minnesota with me at the end of October.
Hotel Breakfast
When we originally went downstairs for breakfast the place was packed and many of the dishes were empty. But after several minutes the food was replenished.
I made a plate of three different types of carbs, a small serving of eggs and some bacon. With the limited variety, the food quality was better than average for a free hotel breakfast.
Final Thought
We really liked our stay at the Hyatt Place in St. Paul, Minnesota. We were only visiting to see a concert at the nearby Xcel Center, which is a short walk away (albeit with a large hill when walking from the hotel). There are plenty of places to eat and drink in the nearby downtown, which we covered in the post about our short trip.
The fact that this hotel is only a Hyatt Category 2 and is bookable with 8,000 points makes it a great value.
I was just wondering, have you stayed at any interesting hotels located in buildings that used to have a different purpose? They’re quickly becoming our favorite type of place to stay.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
