Shoreline Hotel Opens on Lake Minnetonka

The lake’s first new hotel in a century packs vacation vibes — even for those close to home.

Ever since her husband died far too young in a car accident in 2008, Kelly Olsen’s life goal has been to encourage people to slow down, take a breath, and appreciate the little moments with their loved ones. After all, she knows, those moments aren’t guaranteed. Her passion for prioritizing peace, combined with her background in real estate development, recently led her to her perfect role: developing, designing, and opening the Shoreline Hotel and Cabana Anna’s restaurant right on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.

Olsen, who lives in the Lake Minnetonka area and is part-owner of The Guest House short-term vacation rental in Excelsior, had dreamed of opening a hotel long before she found the perfect spot—which just so happened to be right under her nose all along.

“I lived right around the corner from this sleepy office building,” she says. “And when I saw it go on the market, I started looking into these surveys the city had sent to people who lived in the town, asking what kind of amenities they were looking for when talking about guiding future growth. Repeatedly, people had said restaurants, places that were community-oriented, and places they could access the lake.”

Olsen knew she could give her community what it was craving—and, after three years of long city approvals (there were concerns about noises, smells, and parking) and renovations to transform the existing office building into a hotel and restaurant, the Shoreline officially opened to guests on May 1.

“We knew we wanted to use the office building itself,” she says. “It was built closer than you could build today—now, you’d have to build 50 feet from the shoreline, and that runs right through the middle of the building. And it was perfectly oriented to the lake, with beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows.”

The hotel boasts 27 guest rooms and suites—23 of which face the lake, and 17 of which have private lake-facing decks—as well as a small event space, a hotel lounge, bar, and restaurant. The crew also installed docks with 32 boat slips, most of which are reserved for hotel and restaurant guests. Guests can lounge or swim at a private beach, borrow the hotel’s paddleboards and wakesurfing gear, take a yoga class or wakesurfing lesson, or grab one of the hotel’s bikes for a ride into town.

The interior, concocted by Shea Design and Studio M, evokes a spa-like sense of vacation serenity through tone-on-tone neutrals, blues, giant windows, and lake-inspired touches that evoke elegant over nautical. Paintings by local artists will rotate in and out of the halls on a quarterly basis. “I’ve had physical mood boards hanging on my walls for three years of how I wanted people to feel when they walked in,” Olsen says. “I wanted it to be a place they could walk in and exhale, like I’ve come to a place where I can relax.”

The intentionality extends to the restaurant Cabana Anna’s, named after Olsen’s fiery grandmother Anna, who lived to be 104. “She was my maid of honor when she was 100,” Olsen laughs. “She jumped out of a cake on her 99th birthday, rode a mechanical bull in her 90s, was always game for anything.”

Olsen and chef Josh Brown, formerly of Bacio and D’Amico, describe Cabana Anna’s as “South Florida meets Minnesota,” with an emphasis on comfort food and local produce. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily.

The space itself has a beachy, laidback feel, complete with a bar top made from a 300-year-old rotten oak that had to be cut down in the hotel’s parking area. Olsen and Brown grow all of the restaurant’s microgreens, herbs, and edible flowers on a 26-foot-long grow wall in the hotel lobby, nodding to both grandma Anna’s love of gardening and Olsen and Brown’s shared passion for growing their own food.

“I actually went to high school with him,” Olsen says of Brown. “I met him back when he was working at Burger King and I was begging him to throw extra chicken tenders into my bag. Now he’s this extraordinary chef, making everything here. It’s all scratch-made, locally sourced—with the exception of the fish, which we’re getting from The Fish Guys.”

Olsen hopes guests will feel comfortable arriving to the restaurant just as they are. “I want this to be a place where people can just drive their boat up, throw on a coverup, and have a really, really great meal,” Olsen says. “We want to have that lake life, come-as-you-are feeling for guests and locals.”

Hotel (and restaurant!) reservations are now available, with Classic King rooms starting around $300 per night.

Shoreline Hotel and Cabana Anna’s, 4165 Shoreline Dr., Spring Park, 952-295-8005, shorelinehotel.com, cabanaannas.com

Source: Mspmag.com