Knowing Your Neighbors: Endion Station Goes from Pub to Inn

New hotel set to open later this week.

DULUTH, Minn.- Later this week Canal Park will welcome a new boutique hotel, or “brew-tique” as the owner calls it, making use of the previously empty Endion Station building.

“People are hungry for a boutique hotel, and a boutique experience,” Rod Raymond said.

Last February Raymond, owner of Fitger’s Brewhouse, Burrito Union, and the Rathskeller, branched out of his wheelhouse to take on turning Endion Station Pub into a hotel.

“We like doing goofy things. We like doing authentic things and real things as an organization,” he said.”

At the time, the Pub was only open seasonally.

“It became the place to go on your warm summer day, right? And if yo’re from Duluth, the warm summer days are few and far between.”

To Raymond, that would be a waste of a beautiful space. “There’s an old adage, it says you never catch a falling knife–you got to try to get rid of that thing, try to do a new idea.”

“So we tried a new idea.”

As the general contractor himself, Raymond got right to work. He wanted to preserve as much of the building’s history as he could: “the room we’re in now is the old ticket counter, where you can still see the ticket counter, right?” while also bringing something new.

“So unlike a regular hotel there’s nothing robotic in this space, this is, every room is designed differently,” said Raymond. Each room is unique, but bonded in a similar theme.

“There’s five bedrooms here, done in a European design which means high ceilings, lot of white colors, with some bold red colors, big large bathrooms, large showers, an outdoor sauna which is a barrel sauna, and our fire pit which faces Lake Superior,” he said.

After wrapping up a few things by Wednesday, Raymond said they should be open for business Thursday or Friday. Rooms will be similarly priced to that of the other hotels in the area.

Raymond hopes the coziness will be a selling point for the hotel.

“How fun it’d be to get five family members or five friends to each take a room and have this whole place to yourself. Y’know if you get five friends together in a large hotel you don’t have the whole place to yourself.”

A new hotel experience, wrapped up in an old package.

“I hope people can appreciate just slow down a little bit and appreciate these old buildings because they deserve the love and we certainly have to support them to keep that restoration going, to keep Duluth authentic.”

“Endion Station Inn, your adventure starts here.”