Pet hotel dubbed Ritz-Carlton for dogs to open in Deerfield
A luxury hotel is coming to Deerfield and its guests may be among the most exclusive on the North Shore.
To start with, they'll need four paws and a tail, and perhaps a well-heeled owner.
K9 Resorts, a national pet hotel chain which bills itself as the Ritz-Carlton for dogs, is opening its first Illinois location Monday in Deerfield. The facility features individual suites with high-definition TVs tuned 24/7 to DogTV and Animal Planet, premium shampoos in its bathing salons, antimicrobial play areas, an air purification system and of course, room service.
'We believe in elevating pet care to almost human-grade hospitality, hotel quality,' said Nehme Abouzeid, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Luxury Pet Hotel Investments, a K9 Resorts investor and franchisee launching the Deerfield location. 'We like to say that we're a hotel, and our guests just happen to be dogs.'
Located in a former Mexican restaurant on a Home Depot outlot by the Metra station along Lake Cook Road, the Deerfield K9 Resorts underwent a four-month, multimillion dollar buildout to transform into a luxury pet hotel.
Out went the kitchens and in went high-end accommodations for hounds that at first glance, might beckon their human companions to check in as well.
It has a glitzy lobby adorned with chandeliers, ornate columns, tasteful artwork and a regal front desk. The inviting hotel rooms are numbered, set off by wall sconces, giving the ambience of a high-end resort for people, who of course, are paying the tab for their furry family members.
'I think that the attention to detail that we put into each resort is so obvious that it makes the customer, the two-legged customer, feel good,' said Jason Parker, 38, co-founder and co-CEO of New Jersey-based K9 Resorts. 'The dogs are very happy customers, because they're in a five-star hotel.'
Started as teenagers in 2005 by brothers Steven and Jason Parker, K9 Resorts has grown to 45 locations in 28 states, including the new Deerfield pet hotel. Five locations are corporate-owned with the rest franchised.
The dog hotel magnates have certainly elevated the traditional boarding experience, from cage-free lodging options and air purification systems to prevent kennel cough to offering individual or group play sessions coordinated by a trained staff of dog concierges and attendants.
K9 Resorts doesn't offer potentially stressful activities such as grooming, focusing on amenities that dogs enjoy during their staycations. Allowing them to wind down at the end of the day with a TV in their own rooms is part of the luxury treatment.
'When they're relaxing after a day of doggy day care, and there's nothing better to have them on a very premium dog mattress, relaxing, having their own private space and watching some television,' Parker said.
While the privately held K9 Resorts doesn't disclose systemwide revenue, each location generates between $2 million to $3 million per year, Parker told the Tribune. Meanwhile, the chain is poised for significant growth through franchising, driven in large part by Luxury Pet Hotel Investments, a group with extensive human hospitality experience.
Last year, Luxury Pet Hotel Investments invested $10 million in K9 Resorts and secured exclusive regional development rights in Illinois and beyond. The investment group is headed by longtime hospitality executive Alan Leibman, former CEO of Kerzner International, which developed the Atlantis resorts. LPHI has raised $53 million in equity and currently operates eight pet hotels, with plans to build 50 more, including up to 11 in Southern California, 13 in Florida and eight in the Chicago area by 2029.
Most recently, LPHI opened a K9 Resort near the Los Angeles International Airport in March.
Choosing Deerfield for the first Illinois location, the investment group obtained a 10-year lease on the former El Tradicional Mexican Restaurant in July 2024, converting the 6,200-square-foot building to a luxury pet hotel after getting special use approval from the village.
The location has housed a succession of restaurants, starting with a Bennigan's at the dawn of the new millennium. Other buildings on the sprawling Home Depot outlot include a Curaleaf cannabis dispensary and an empty McAlister's Deli, which closed its Deerfield location in April.
Accommodations at the pet hotel run from $59 a night in the compartment wing of the hotel, bilevel crates with memory foam beds. The executive rooms run $89 per night for 4-by-6-foot enclosures and the top-of-the-line luxury suites are $109 per night.
The 8-by-8-foot luxury suites include a premium couch or Kuranda bed. There is no mini-fridge or Wi-Fi, but each of the six luxury suites has its own 32-inch TV for the dog's viewing pleasure.
'We do put on DogTV and Animal Planet for a calming presence,' said Zack Nisbet, executive vice president in charge of the Chicago region for the investment group.
In addition to extensive work within the building, the Deerfield K9 Resorts features a walled-in, 2,300-square-foot outdoor play area with artificial antimicrobial grass where diners once sipped margaritas on the restaurant's patio as trains rumbled by on the nearby tracks.
While the Home Depot outlot has not necessarily proved fertile ground for restaurants, Nisbet said the high-traffic location should help drive business to the pet hotel.
The pet hotel offers both day care and overnight stays, and can accommodate up to 150 dogs, with family multidog stays. It's located just west of a competing facility, The Dog Stop, which is on the other side of the tracks from K9 Resorts.
'The Dog Stop being across the street, actually excited us,' Nisbet said. 'That's proof of demand, proof that there's a lot of dogs in the area. We knew we could provide an upgrade to the region.'
Chicago is a key expansion market for K9 Resorts and the investment group, which is currently scouting out potential locations in a number of areas, including Palatine, Libertyville and the city itself, Nisbet said.
Nationwide, the luxury pet hotels have opened up in everything from a former Wells Fargo bank branch to a converted CVS pharmacy. One is even housed in a former Old County Buffet, the now defunct all-you-can-eat restaurant chain which closed its last Illinois restaurant five years ago.
While most dogs probably would have been very content to stay at an Old Country Buffet without the renovation, after a lengthy multimillion dollar redevelopment in Deerfield, Nisbet said turning a restaurant into a luxury pet hotel would not be his first choice for the second Chicago-area location.
'This definitely was a fixer-upper,' Nisbet said. 'We had to auction off all the old restaurant equipment. I don't know what our best former use would be, but I wouldn't say it's a restaurant.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Struggling restaurant chain likely to shut down or be sold
Sometimes, the small things get lost when owned by a large company. In multiple cases, Chipotle shut down nascent brands because it seemed impossible for them to grow to a point where they materially impacted earnings. That's also partially why McDonald's sold its stake in Chipotle, well before the Mexican chain became the giant it has grown into. McDonald's itself recently closed down its CosMc's experiment because it made more sense to integrate some of that chain's beverage menu into the core brand rather than growing another chain. Related: Taco Bell menu tries wild items, new kind of shell It's hard to be a small brand at a company that owns multiple larger brands, because it's not worth it for management to focus efforts on your growth. When a company owns multiple major restaurant chains with high growth potential, it may not be the right owner for a smaller, more niche chain. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter That's not a comment on whether than chain offers good food - McDonald's probably always liked the menu at Chipotle - but a decision as to where resources can best be used. Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI) has come to that decision about one of its brands, and the end of that relationship may not be pretty. Darden has decided to walk away from the Bahama Breeze brand. That's something CEO Ricardo Cardenas talked about during his company's fourth-quarter earnings call. "We made the decision to close 15 Bahama Breeze locations in May, leaving the 28 highest-performing Bahama Breeze restaurants in our portfolio. After further review, we have made the difficult decision that these remaining locations and the Bahama Breeze brand are not a strategic priority for us. We also believe that this brand and these restaurants have the potential to benefit from a new owner," he shared. While a sale is a possibility, other options are being considered. "Consequently, we will be considering strategic alternatives for Bahama Breeze, including a potential sale of the brand, or converting restaurants to other Darden brands. Excluding any onetime potential impacts, which are unknown as of today, we do not expect these strategic alternatives including a potential sale to have a material impact on our financial results," he added. The CEO offered more color on the decision to shut down or sell Bahama Breeze. "And then lastly, on the decision on Bahama Breeze, we have, when we look at our portfolio and we try to determine what brands we add to our portfolio, we have criteria. And [those] criteria should be what we look at to keep brands in our portfolio," he shared. More Food and Retail: Another healthy fast-food chain files Chapter 11 bankruptcyCostco quietly pulls popular product, upsets fansStarbucks brings back fan-favorite menu item after 2-year hiatus Bahama Breeze, he noted, no longer fits the criteria. "And we think that they have a lot of growth potential with another owner. We were not going to be putting a lot of investment into Bahama Breeze. And so to give those team members and those managers growth opportunities, it's better for them to be under a different ownership," he added. While Bahama Breeze did not meet Darden's criteria, its Italian restaurant chain, Olive Garden, has been adding locations around the world. The company has also sold some Olive Gardens to a franchise partner. "We also signed a definitive agreement to sell the eight Olive Garden locations in Canada to Recipe Unlimited, the largest full-service operator in Canada, and we are on track to close that deal soon. These eight restaurants will become franchised and upon close, Darden and Recipe Unlimited will enter into an area development agreement to open 30 more Olive Gardens over the next 10 years," Cardenas said. Those are not the only restaurant plans for Olive Garden and other Darden brands. "In addition to the agreement with Recipe Unlimited, we also have new agreements with partners in India and Spain, each of which calls for the development of 40 Olive Garden locations as well as an agreement with our existing Ruth's Chris franchise partner in Asia for the development of 6 Capital Grill locations," he added. Related: Popular BBQ chain closes almost all locations, no bankruptcy The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘I just want finality': GOP greets newest TikTok extension with resignation
President Donald Trump's latest move to keep TikTok alive is yet again frustrating congressional Republicans, many of whom object to China's continued involvement in the popular app but just want to be done with the whole drama. 'Not my favorite thing,' Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), along-time proponent of the ban, deadpanned, when asked about the president's plan to issue another extension. He spoke a day before the White House confirmed Trump signed a 90-day suspension of enforcement of the law requiring TikTok to divest from ByteDance, its China-based parent company, throwing another lifeline to the short-form video app. By Friday, some House lawmakers registered a note of resigned irritation. The extension — Trump's third since the law went into effect on Jan. 19 — is a unilateral decision not envisioned in the bipartisan law passed by Congress and upheld last year by the Supreme Court. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence and China committees, told POLITICO. 'The national security concerns and vulnerabilities are still there, and they have not gone away. I would argue they've almost become more enhanced in many ways." But Trump's extension of the TikTok law largely boxed out Republicans in both chambers who have shown little inclination — beyond stern words — to prevent him from making these postponements almost routine. Many GOP lawmakers saw themselves as granting the president space to cut a promised deal while the White House deals with urgent priorities, like trade negotiations and the Israel-Iran conflict. 'In light of everything going on, I think he did the right thing,' Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a China hawk who voted for the ban, told POLITICO of Trump. 'I have concerns about all kinds of things — that [the extension] is on the list — but it's not at the top of the list.' Though Trump has promised his TikTok negotiations areclosely tied to trade talks with China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified last week to a Senate panel that TikTok's sale wasnot currently a part of the negotiations with China, raising a further potential obstacle to Trump inking a deal in the near future. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of the president and longtime national-security hawk said earlier in the week: 'The sooner we get that issue solved, the better,' without offering any ideas for further enforcement. 'I just want finality,' Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO. 'I want some certainty and just know that the Congress isn't being played when we make a decision [that the app] be sold.' Another member of the House China Committee, Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), told POLITICO, 'No more extensions. It's time to follow through.' Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), also a member of the China panel, noted in a post on X Thursday the law only allows one extension of the compliance deadline, adding, 'I was proud to support the ban of TikTok and believe the law should be implemented as written.' With their comments, the lawmakers echoed House China Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who in early June called for the U.S. to 'let [TikTok] go dark' to bring China to the table to negotiate. He reiterated that stance on Friday. 'Delays only embolden the Chinese Communist Party,' Moolenaar said in a statement to POLITICO. 'I urge the administration to enforce the law as written and protect the American people from this growing national security threat." Still, observers say Republicans are not exercising their leverage to demand the White House enforce the law they helped write, for example by withholding funding or congressional oversight hearings. "I keep reading that Republicans are 'frustrated' and 'impatient' about their TikTok law being ignored, but they should stop complaining to reporters and take it up with Trump,' said Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the pro-tech Chamber of Progress. Among the Republicans being undercut by the president is his own secretary of state. Marco Rubio — who as senator was one of the loudest critics of TikTok's ties to China, and a huge backer of the app's ban — has been conspicuously silent as Trump has repeatedly granted more time to strike a deal for its sale. 'You have to decide what's more important, our national security and the threat that it poses to our national security,' Rubio told POLITICO in March 2023, as Congress was considering a ban. 'You have to weigh that against what you might think the electoral consequences of it are. For me, it's an easy balancing act. I mean, there is no balance. I'm always going to be for our national security.' A spokesperson for Rubio at the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Democrats — even those who support keeping TikTok online — say Trump's approach is the wrong one. 'These endless extensions are not only illegal, but they also put TikTok's fate in the hands of risk-averse corporate shareholders,' Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told POLITICO in a statement. 'This is deeply unfair to TikTok's creators and users. I'm prepared to work towards a solution, but Trump isn't coming to the table.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
World Bank and IMF climate snub 'worrying', says COP29 presidency
The hosts of the most recent UN climate talks are worried international lenders are retreating from their commitments to help boost funding for developing countries' response to global warming. Major development banks have agreed to boost climate spending and are seen as crucial in the effort to dramatically increase finance to help poorer countries build resilience to impacts and invest in renewable energy. But anxiety has grown as the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid and discouraged US-based development lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from focussing on climate finance. Developing nations, excluding China, will need an estimated $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in financial assistance to transition to renewable energy and climate-proof their economies from increasing weather extremes. Nowhere near this amount has been committed. At last year's UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations agreed to increase climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate. Azerbaijan and Brazil, which is hosting this year's COP30 conference, have launched an initiative to reduce the shortfall, with the expectation of "significant" contributions from international lenders. But so far only two -- the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank -- have responded to a call to engage the initiative with ideas, said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev. "We call on their shareholders to urgently help us to address these concerns," he told climate negotiators at a high-level summit in the German city of Bonn this week. "We fear that a complex and volatile global environment is distracting" many of those expected to play a big role in bridging the climate finance gap, he added. - A 'worrisome trend' - His team travelled to Washington in April for the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings hoping to find the same enthusiasm for climate lending they had encountered a year earlier. But instead they found institutions "very much reluctant now to talk about climate at all", said Azerbaijan's top climate negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev. This was a "worrisome trend", he said, given expectations these lenders would extend the finance needed in the absence of other sources. "They're very much needed," he said. The World Bank is directing 45 percent of its total lending to climate, as part of an action plan in place until June 2026, with the public portion of that spilt 50/50 between emissions reductions and building resilience. The United States, the World Bank's biggest shareholder, has pushed in a different direction. On the sidelines of the April spring meetings, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the bank to focus on "dependable technologies" rather than "distortionary climate finance targets." This could mean investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production, he said. Under the Paris Agreement, wealthy developed countries -- those most responsible for global warming to date -- are obliged to pay climate finance to poorer nations. Other countries, most notably China, make voluntary contributions. - Money matters - Finance is a source of long-running tensions at UN climate negotiations. Donors have consistently failed to deliver on past finance pledges, and have committed well below what experts agree developing nations need to cope with the climate crisis. The issue flared up again this week in Bonn, with nations at odds over whether to debate financial commitments from rich countries during the formal meetings. European nations have also pared back their foreign aid spending in recent months, raising fears that budgets for climate finance could also face a haircut. At COP29, multilateral development banks (MDBs) led by the World Bank Group estimated they could provide $120 billion annually in climate financing to low and middle income countries, and mobilise another $65 billion from the private sector by 2030. Their estimate for high income countries was $50 billion, with another $65 billion mobilised from the private sector. Rob Moore, of policy think tank E3G, said these lenders are the largest providers of international public finance to developing countries. "Whilst they are facing difficult political headwinds in some quarters, they would be doing both themselves and their clients a disservice by disengaging on climate change," he said. The World Bank in particular has done "a huge amount of work" to align its lending with global climate goals. "If they choose to step back this would be at their own detriment, and other banks like the regionally based MDBs would likely play a bigger role in shaping the economy of the future," he said. The World Bank declined to comment on the record. klm/np/mh/jj
