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Galt House says goodbye to gaudy


Courtesy The Galt House Hotel

Galt dominates downtown
The Galt House is the largest element on the riverfront. It’s two towers, separated by Fourth Street, were built about a decade apart, with the hotel’s rooms divided almost evenly between them. The Rivue Tower, on the west side of the street, opened in 1972. The Suite Tower, so named because all its rooms are suites, opened in 1985.  A nondescript walkway across Fourth Street linked the two.

The Suite Tower dominates in terms of meeting space with its second-floor 23,330-square-foot grand ballroom and, across the hall, a 13,000-square-foot exhibit hall. On the same level are eight meeting rooms and, one of Moseley’s upgrades, Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, a high-end restaurant chain based in Cincinnati. The Suite Tower’s third floor has another 10 meeting rooms.

In the Rivue Tower, the 16,000-square-foot Archibald Cochran Ballroom is the main meeting space; it was remodeled in 2010. A welcome addition is glass doors to a long balcony overlooking Belvedere Park and the river beyond.

The balcony is one of the ways the Galt House has re-emphasized its riverfront location. A fitness center on top of the Suite Tower has views of the water and downtown. Diners can watch barges and riverboats from their tables in the Rivue Tower on the 25th floor, where there are twin revolving dining rooms.

The once nondescript bridge linking the towers is now the Conservatory. All glass, a knockoff of London’s Crystal Palace, it is a sunny space for coffee from its 24-hour deli and a bright spot in the evening at A.J.’s Bar, where stools face the river and tropical fish swim in a 30-foot aquarium bar. Clutches of couches and chairs invite conversation as birds chirp in the aviary that anchors the hotel’s “great room.”

More connections to the river and downtown are to come. Work is under way on a rooftop garden; Moseley says it is the size of a football field. A rooftop storage space has been turned into a private dining room with a window looking out to the river. It will adjoin the garden, which should be opened later this year.

Among other planned changes are new retail shops, including an ice cream shop, along the Suite Tower’s Main Street frontage.

Physical connections add versatility
The Galt House’s unusual configuration and its physical connections to other venues allow it to be used in many ways. The North American Christian Convention recently used the hotel for its National Bible Bowl. With 100 teams competing, the group needed the Galt House’s near-convention-center-size meeting space.

Likewise, the American Council of the Blind held all of its meetings and events in the hotel when it met in Louisville earlier this year. “We have an exhibit hall and 70 general sessions for 1,000 attendees with numerous breakouts,” said conference planner Janet Dickelman.

Other groups use the Galt House for their overnight accommodations and meals and meet in the Kentucky International Convention Center, several blocks away, connected to the hotel by skywalk. Other large conventions stay there and hold their assemblies at the KFC Yum! Center Arena next door, also attached by skywalk.

Showing off improvements

The Galt House has been assertive in showing meeting planners how drastically it has changed for the better. It has hosted the conferences of numerous tourism and meeting industry associations and brought in scores of meeting planners for site visits.

Haller and her staff continue to do so, hosting 250 to 350 site visits each year, most of them one on one. In addition to the hotel, the visitors see all of the other changes in the city.

“A new Marriott has opened, the Kentucky Exposition Center has expanded and renovated, Fourth Street Live! has opened, and the KFC Yum! Center has opened,” said Haller. There’s also a minor league ballpark, several new museums and an infusion of small, locally owned shops and restaurants.

“When you look around the country, you don’t usually see that kind of infusion in such a short period of time,” said Haller.

Looking back, Moseley is thankful her family elected to stay with the business.

“When we lost Dad, we sat down and said ‘we can sell it and get out of this and go our own ways,’” said Moseley. “Dad was so community- oriented. He always felt the city should be on the river, and his passion spilled into us. To walk away from it, it would have been hard to do.”