The Hawkeye State may soon be running short on top-notch hotels. Triple-A gives its four diamond rating to only the most plush facilities, and for many years, Iowa’s only had three hotels make the cut. One of them, the Hotel Pattee in Perry, closed at the end of 2006.
Now, it appears one of the remaining two of the state’s best hotels will follow suit. The owners of the Abbey Hotel in Bettendorf have applied for a zoning change to allow conversion to a substance abuse treatment center, saying they can’t compete with a hotel-casino complex on the Mississippi riverfront a few blocks away. That would leave only one four diamond hotel in Iowa — the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Council Bluffs.