Motto by Hilton Indianapolis (King Cole Building)

Motto by Hilton Indianapolis has been planned for the 1915 King Cole Building near Monument Circle since a September 2019 announcement, but the 116-room conversion still hasn't broken ground. Chicago's Gettys Group is behind the project, whose budget has grown from roughly $21 million to as much as $54 million across years of reported delays.

The place

1 North Meridian Street, inside the King Cole Building near Monument Circle, in downtown Indianapolis.

The concept

Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller designed the 11-story, terra-cotta-clad King Cole Building in 1915 in the Beaux Arts style; it is a contributing structure in the Washington Street–Monument Circle Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, and later housed the Seville Tavern and the King Cole restaurant, but never operated as a hotel. Chicago's Gettys Group announced plans to convert it into a Motto by Hilton in September 2019, with its Gettys One interior-design division — which also handled the dual-branded Hyatt House/Hyatt Place across from Bankers Life Fieldhouse — attached to the project. The budget has climbed steadily without construction starting: initial estimates around $21 million had grown to $48.5 million by 2022 and were cited elsewhere as high as $54 million. In February 2025, Indianapolis historians extended an expired certificate of appropriateness for the building — procedural evidence of just how long the project has stalled. Hilton describes it as in active development while financing is finalized.

Dining & wellness

Plans call for a rooftop bar and restaurant, a street-level cafe and a street-level bar, but none of these has been built — construction has not started, so no operator or concept names exist yet.