St. Kate

A landmark renovation can be a thrilling ride for everyone involved, and the Marcus Group’s St.Kate hotel project in downtown Milwaukee, the company’s home city, was just that. St. Kate,with a concept that unites boutique hotel, communal workplace, community gathering place andarts and theater venues, was intended as a vibrant gift to the historic city the Marcus family calls home.

Sharing a building with the city’s largest arts organization, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, offered St. Kate an instant connection to the local arts community, a connection Morlights helped strengthen by contributing its expertise to arts spaces within the hotel, including a black box theater and exhibit space that welcomes emerging local artists.

As the transition of the historic building into a fresh, new concept hotel and venue unfolded,changing parameters, budget limitations and aging infrastructure required flexibility and accommodations in scope from the Morlights team. Ultimately, we executed a thoughtful,forward-looking lighting plan explicitly tailored to the current renovation, while also producing a complete road map for future updates, right down to technical documentation.

Morlights’ versatility and ability to take client goals and make them our own made the project a success—and helped bring a landmark building to brilliant new life.

“Artful lighting helped create the art-centric focus of this new hotel, but a flexible and forward-looking approach to planning gave the client a project-wide win.”—Avi Mor