BLOOMINGTON, MN-Hotel firm Carlson and Mortenson Development Inc. have signed an agreement to build a new $130 million Radisson Blu hotel that will connect to the Mall of America. The new hotel is the start of the 4.2-million-square-foot mall’s $2 billion second phase expansion project.

The 501-room new hotel will be connected by sky bridge to the mall, and will be located on the south side, between Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s department stores. Construction of the hotel is expected to begin in December, with an opening planned for late 2012.

Bob Kleinschmidt, EVP and chief of development for Carlson Hotels Americas, tells GlobeSt.com that this hotel is the second in the company’s $1.5 billion Ambition 2015 growth strategy (including the new Blu going into the Aqua project in Chicago) to build new Radisson hotels in major North American cities. “This new hotel is unique because it’s a destination location, with more than 40 million visitors a year, about 10% of them international,” Kleinschmidt says.

He says the hotel market is starting to recover from one of the deepest downturns in hospitality history. “We clearly hit the bottom and are on the climb up. In the past three months, there’s been improvements across the board, occupancies are on the rise,” Kleinschmidt says.

Kurt Hagen, SVP with Mall of America, tells GlobeSt.com that the second phase expansion was created about the time the mall opened in 1992, but that the economy pushed back the plans. “When the economy sunk we decided to break the second phase into many subsets. The first piece was this hotel,” he says.

Other planned components include a Mayo Clinic branch, water park hotel, performing arts theater and about 800,000 square feet more retail, though Hagen says those pieces don’t have a definite start date. “We’re kind of at the mercy of the financing climate. We’re hopeful the Mayo phase will start in about a year, and to have the entire expansion completed in five to seven years,” he says.

Though the downturn hurt expansion plans, Hagen says the mall itself hasn’t suffered, remaining at about 95% occupied. “I think we’re a retail abnormality, we haven’t felt the recession because of the tourists. Sales were flat throughout the recession, but they’re up this year,” he says.