Northpark, Part Of Grand View Lodge’s $30 Million Expansion, Opens At Resort

Grand View Lodge was first established in 1916 as a small vacation destination, but as of this May, it will soon become the largest resort in Minnesota.

“There’s no place in the area that has this type of recreation. So this is really going to help get our guests to enjoy the atmosphere,” said Kelby Klimek, Grand View Lodge Recreation Director.

The resort is undergoing a $30 million expansion which includes the addition of a 60-room boutique hotel, a new recreation center, a wedding chapel, and two new residential communities.

“The expansion is huge. We’re getting 40 new cabins, a 60-room boutique hotel, and then Northpark,” explained Klimek.

The recreation center opened its doors to the public on March 1st.

“We have this beautiful fitness center, we have a spin/yoga classroom, lap pool. It will have an exterior pool the same size that will open up on Memorial [Day] Weekend,” said Frank Soukup, Cote Family Destinations Director of Marketing.

The boutique hotel and the remainder of the expansion is slated to be open by July. The hotel, along with the new residential communities and cabins, will add accommodations for up to 500 guests a night, making Grand View Lodge the largest resort in Minnesota.

The Grand View Lodge expansion is expected to bring more business to the area and impact the city of Nisswa.

“We’ll be looking at around 1,500 people every single day that we will be bringing into the community. All of our guests, they get gas, they stop by the liquor store and the grocery store to buy their food,” added Soukup. “Just that type of effect of 450 more people every single day to the community, we’re going to see the effects overall in everybody’s pockets and businesses.”

Though the project at hand is large, Grand View expects that it won’t be the final expansion that the resort sees.

“Who knows where this will take us, to tell you the truth. Right now it’s just about doing everything that we’ve always done really well in the past and bringing that on a little larger scale and seeing how it works from there,” Soukup said. “So we’ll just have to take a look after this summer and decide where to go next.”