We live in Maryville, IL - about 15 minutes from downtown. Barnes is in the central west end - great part of town - my guess is you can find any number of hotels downtown that would be about 5-10 minutes away. If I were you - I would get on priceline.com and try to get a good price - if there is nothing going on downtown - you can probably get a good rate around $50 or so, although I am sure prices go up on the weekend, but my brother gets deals all the time downtown and he always uses priceline.