MOORHEAD, Minn. (KFGO) – What was once the iconic F-M Hotel and home to The Tree Top restaurant & lounge in downtown Moorhead may be a hotel once again.
Mayor Shelly Carlson made the announcement Thursday at The Chamber’s State of the Cities event as she discussed bringing diverse workforce talent to the area.
“One of the things that ties in with recruiting people to come to our community is to make sure they have a nice place and hotel at which to stay, and I have been given permission by Kevin Bartram to announce publicly that he has purchased the U.S. Bank building and will be building a hotel in our downtown, which is going to be a wonderful amenity,” she said.
Carlson added she was holding out hope that Bartram would re-open the much-loved Tree Top on the building’s 7th floor as part of the project, but Bartram, a local developer, told KFGO News that wasn’t likely.
Bartram said while U.S. Bank still owns the first floor of the building, he purchased floors 2-7 of at the end of December, and has plans to convert it into either a hotel or failing that, multi-family housing. He said the current office tenants would likely stay in the building for the next year or so and the project would start in earnest in 2024 or 2025
The building was constructed as a hotel in the late 1940s and operated as the Frederick-Martin, or F-M Hotel, from 1950 to 1972. The hotel housed a radio station (KVOX) in the basement, and a number of popular food and drink establishments, like The Depot Club, Barn coffee shop and Skol Room bar, and the most prominent being a fine-dining restaurant which occupied the F-M’s uppermost floor called The Tree Top Room.
The Tree Top Restaurant and Lounge continued to be a fixture of the Fargo-Moorhead fine dining scene even after the hotel closed. It closed in 2001.
[This story has been updated.]
Sounds like a good thing to do. Moorhead needs the FM back..