The Courtyard in the Hall of Fame's Shell

Announced 2015 · Opened April 2018

Lead: The College Football Hall of Fame's South Bend building — whose own history, from the enshrinements to the last festival of 2012, is told in the Halls of Fame account of this record — became a hotel's lobby. In April 2015 the city announced that JSK Hospitality would buy the former Hall of Fame building and its lot for $1.2 million. Work began in August 2016 on a five-story, 140-room Courtyard by Marriott at 121 South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a fourteen-million-dollar project that incorporates the Hall of Fame building as the hotel's lobby and JSK's corporate offices, and ties into Century Center by the existing tunnel under St. Joseph Street. The Courtyard by Marriott South Bend Downtown opened in April 2018 — the trade press carried its opening on 18 and 25 April 2018 — and operates today.

The conversion is the downtown lodging record in miniature: a hall of fame that left for Atlanta, a shell the city held, and a hotel that took the shell for its front room. Guests of the Courtyard check in where the enshrinees' hall stood — the only hotel in this record, and one of few anywhere, whose lobby is a hall of fame.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend announcement, April 2015 (the $1.2 million sale to JSK Hospitality).
2. Commercial Property Executive, 18 April 2018, and Hotel Executive, 25 April 2018 (the opening; 140 rooms; $14 million; construction from August 2016; the Hall of Fame building as lobby).
3. The Halls of Fame account in this record (the Hall's South Bend course).