[17] The building's owner, Heaven on Earth Inns Corp, run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, looked into several options before selling the property to Rubloff, Inc., which in 2001 announced plans to convert the building into condominiums priced as high as $8.5 million (equivalent to $14.6 million in 2023).

[9][18] Rubloff's plans were unsuccessful due to financing difficulties and a lackluster market for buyers of Blackstone condominiums.

[19] Even two rounds of price cuts were not enough to spur interest in the condo opportunities and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's non-profit organization was unable to obtain financing.

[20] The engineering firm handling the exterior renovation was Illinois-based Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.[24] The restoration resulted in 332 rooms, 12 suites, and 13,230 square feet (1,229 m2) of meeting space.

The 21-story hotel is now equipped with a health club, a business center, and a street-level cafe with outdoor seating area.

[12] The primary historic facades were fully restored, including the hotel's ornate terra cotta-clad exterior.

However, the Presidential Suite's famed hidden passage behind the fireplace—which allowed the president to exit through the hotel's eastern stairwell unnoticed—has been converted into closet space.

[28] The transition included a renovation to update the look of the hotel with a historic meets-contemporary-feel by revitalizing the soft goods of the guest rooms, meeting spaces and lobby.

[31] Although the convention was being held at the Chicago Coliseum, a group of Republican leaders met at the Blackstone on the night of June 11 to come to a consensus.

In all, guests have included at least 12 U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter.

[2][11][36][37] According to the Landmarks Division of the City of Chicago's Department of Planning and Development, the hotel's exterior and interior are considered an excellent example of neoclassical Beaux-Arts architecture;[2] the nomination form for the building's listing on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places classifies the structure as distinctly Second Empire.

On the exterior south and east (front) elevations is a one-story base of pink granite,[11] with high arched openings; it supports the red brick- and terra cotta-trimmed building shaft.

The large windows of the second and third floor, which once poured natural light into the lobby, ballroom, and restaurants, had mostly been covered for the Mayfair Theatre which was the home of the Chicago production of Shear Madness for 17 years from September 22, 1982, to November 11, 1999.

Among its uses in cinema, it hosted the banquet where Al Capone smashes a guest's head with a baseball bat in the Brian De Palma film The Untouchables, a party in The Hudsucker Proxy, and Tom Cruise's pre-pool tourney stay in The Color of Money.

[36][40] Also, the 1996–2000 television series Early Edition was set in this building, featuring a man (Kyle Chandler) who lives in the hotel and receives the newspaper a day in advance.

[41] The hotel is referenced as part of a major plot point in the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams and the accompanying film.