Dave's Vacation Plans

Now Anderson is getting in on the chlorinated action, and adding a few twists of his own. His new restaurants will eventually be part of the KeyLime Cove Resort, a $135 million, 414-room combined waterpark and hotel in Gurnee, an Illinois town roughly halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. Slated to open sometime next year, the KeyLime will be situated at the junction of Illinois Route 132 and I-94, on one of the nation’s busiest stretches of interstate highway.

The location is in keeping with another trend that Anderson sees coming. He terms KeyLime an “urban destination resort.” He believes that the real future for vacation properties lies right outside major metropolitan areas. Life has become so hectic for many families that the time they have to spend with relatives and friends has been squeezed. From his own perspective as a long-time resort owner, “one thing I noticed with my resort in Hayward is that families would no longer rent one cabin, but two for extended family and friends.”

The harried pace also means that making time for travel has become harder and harder for families. “In the past 10 years, the average family has lost seven hours off its vacation,” Anderson says. A two-week vacation has largely become a thing of the past. “Typically, you travel for vacation,” he says. “But with the lessening of family vacation time, people think: ‘If something is close by, why spend the day schlepping the kids through the airport? Why spend a day in agony to get someplace?’”

And why depend upon the weather? Before it had waterpark hotels, Anderson says, Wisconsin Dells virtually became a ghost town each year from the time the cold weather moved in until the town’s outdoor attractions reopened each spring. Winter recreational activities in the Upper Midwest can be just as iffy, since snowfall is less of a given these days.

What’s behind the KeyLime idea, then, is something grander than just food and water. “Our concept,” Anderson asserts, “will revolutionize the way Americans go on vacation.”

Dave’s Corner

Anderson opened the first Famous Dave’s in 1994, quickly expanded, and took the restaurant chain public in 1996. After leaving the company in 2004, he earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (even though he didn’t have an undergraduate degree). He also helped establish the LifeSkills Center for Leadership on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis to help at-risk youth, and served as the head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs from 2004 to 2005. (His tenure at the BIA was controversial, due to past investment ties with gambling entrepreneur Lyle Berman. Some in Congress called for Anderson’s resignation, since he recused himself from all Indian casino matters—considered a key part of the BIA’s work.)

But even after departing corporate duties with Famous Dave’s of America, Inc., Anderson continued to operate the original restaurant, located on the property of his Grand Pines resort in Hayward. After leaving the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he decided to focus on his new restaurant ideas. As his plans expanded, he originally thought about building the KeyLime Cove Resort in Hayward. But Hayward was too far from a big metropolitan area, where most of his guests would be coming from. Working with the Madison, Wisconsin, office of business consulting firm Virchow Krause, which is helping to raise investment funds for the KeyLime project, Anderson hunted around for a prime location. Having grown up in the Chicago area, he was familiar with the market possibilities of the 30-acre Gurnee site.

“Wisconsin Dells attracts 3 million visitors a year and it has 19 indoor waterparks,” Anderson says. “My particular corner has the Gurnee Mills [Mall] and the Bass Pro Shop, which together draw 22 million visitors, and the Six Flags [Great America amusement park], which attracts another 3 million. So we have a total of 25 million visitors a year to my corner.” According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, roughly 100,000 vehicles on I-94 and 50,000 on Illinois 132 pass by Anderson’s KeyLime site every day. A number of large companies—including Abbott Laboratories, Hewitt Associates, Motorola, Kemper Insurance, and Baxter Healthcare—have major offices and facilities nearby.

Another selling point for the Gurnee site: Surrounding hotels have only small meeting spaces. “There is a definite need for expanded conference facilities,” says Kevin Burrow, lead architect on the KeyLime project with Planning Design Build, the Madison-based firm that is managing construction. (Planning Design Build also built the Kalahari waterpark in Wisconsin Dells, among others.) The 430,000-square-foot KeyLime Cove Resort complex will offer 12,000 square feet of conference space.

The concept for KeyLime Cove Resort is as American as, well, key lime pie. “Our research told us that if you go anywhere and ask 100 people their idea of the ultimate dream vacation, 99 will say a tropical island escape,” Anderson says. But rather than a Caribbean, Mexican, or Hawaiian theme, the team decided to go with American coastal. To realize the theme and manage the resort, Anderson tapped Morrissey Hospitality, the St. Paul company that operates the St. Paul Grill and the Pazzaluna Restaurant and provides catering for Xcel Energy Center and the St. Paul RiverCentre.

Company President William Morrissey notes that while not all of the facility’s details have been worked out, hotel room prototypes have been tested and a few things are known. “The temperature will be kept warmer than at regular hotels, above 72 degrees. When you walk in, we want you to feel like you’ve been transported to someplace warm.” After registering in the 13,000-square-foot lobby with its 30-foot atrium, guests will make their way to rooms decorated with soft, bright colors, ceiling fans, and doors that appear to be slotted (like those used in the tropics to let in cooling breezes). The six room types will range from a standard unit with two queen beds starting at $179 to the $400-per-night, four-bedroom presidential suite. Elsewhere inside the resort complex, streetlights, preserved palm trees, manufactured rock, a perimeter beach area, and Anderson’s new restaurants will blend together to create a beach-town atmosphere.

Indeed, a KeyLime visitor might well lounge about the place in a Tommy Bahama camp shirt. It would be entirely appropriate, given that the clothing company was cofounded by Minnesotan Bob Emfield. Perhaps only another Upper-Midwesterner could develop a business like the KeyLime resort—a fantasy-escape destination in the middle of the country.