| THE US GRANT Throws Open Its Doors October 18, 2006 By Dani Dodge - Union-Tribune Staff Writer Courtesy of SignOnSanDiego.com  THE US GRANT reopened yesterday as horns blared, pigeons flew and confetti filtered from the sky like snow.San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders thanked the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation for restoring the downtown landmark and “returning it to everyone in San Diego.” Ulysses S. Grant Jr. built the hotel in 1910 to honor his father, the Civil War general who as president set aside 640 acres in 1875 for the tribe in eastern San Diego County. Ulysses S. Grant Jr. built the hotel in 1910 to honor his father, the Civil War general who as president set aside 640 acres in 1875 for the tribe in eastern San Diego County. In 2003, the tribe purchased the 11-story, 270-room hotel at 326 Broadway for $45 million. It spent $52 million on the 20-month renovation. Nearly 300 people attended the hotel's reopening, including Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Reps. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, and Susan Davis, D-San Diego. Sycuan chairman Daniel Tucker seemed amazed yesterday that the tribe had turned around fate to honor Grant by restoring the hotel that bears his name. The tribe has overcome many hardships. When he was young, Tucker, 54, remembers tribal elders leaving the reservation to pick grapes for $1 a day.  It was starting a high stakes bingo game on the reservation in 1983 that sparked a change in the tribe's financial fortunes.“Now we own property in downtown – a whole block of the finest city of the nation,” Tucker said, gazing up at the lobby's chandeliers that dazzled with 20,000 crystals. Some of those who strolled into the grand lobby yesterday – resplendent in marble and crystal – gasped. “This is the first time I've really appreciated the elegance of the original hotel,” Mim Sellgren, a descendant of the nation's 18th president, said with a sigh. “It sparkles. “This is really a tribute to my great-great-grandfather, the Kumeyaay Nation and the city of San Diego.” The tribe's heritage also is preserved at the hotel. Along a wall of the lobby, niches enclosed in glass hold reminders of its history – like a mortar and pestle once used to grind acorns.
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