SEQUIM — The sun burst out and the sky cleared to blue, as if ordered for a bright spot in the dreary economy.
The spot was Thursday morning’s ground-breaking for the Holiday Inn Express, a hotel slated to bring 77 guest rooms and a 2,500-square-foot conference center to Sequim next summer.
Donning sunglasses, Seattle developer Bret Wirta told a brief tale about the project that was originally scheduled for completion last July.
“It was a difficult, slow process to secure financing,” he said. “There are not very many hotel projects receiving funding right now.”
But United Western Bank of Denver and Premier Capital of Bellevue saw Sequim’s “tremendous potential to attract visitors,” he said, and invested in the $8.5 million venture.
The Holiday Inn will be built at 1441 E. Washington St., near Sequim’s eastern edge.
Summer opening
Marketing director Damian Humphreys said he hopes to open the hotel in time for the Sequim Lavender Festival in July.
The official target for opening, however, is August.
Sequim Mayor Laura Dubois, noting that the Inn will have a water feature out front and a roof garden atop its three stories, called it “a great gateway.”
“This will keep the economy moving in Sequim,” she said. “We are very pleased with this project.”
Wirta hired Wright Construction of Portland to build the hotel and architect Dale Sweeney of Bellevue to design it.
“We chose people we have experience with,” Wirta said, adding that local subcontractors will work on the project.
His company, Wirta Hospitality Worldwide, also owns the 60-room Quality Inn and Suites on Sequim’s west side.
Humphreys added that the Holiday Inn will have a swimming pool and fitness room that are slightly larger than those at the Quality Inn.
The new hotel will employ about 30 people, “probably more in summer.”
Nancy Schade, manager of a 25-member staff at the Quality Inn since it opened in 2006, will move over to run the Holiday Inn next year.
Schade won the Choice Hotels Apex Award for customer service and management excellence.
On Thursday, Wirta said he hopes to attract people from the Puget Sound metropolitan area to the Holiday Inn by offering outdoors-oriented vacation packages.
He touted the Olympic Discovery Trail as one of the Sequim area’s best features. And the Inn’s meeting room, with space for 250, will be competitively priced to lure conferences and weddings, he said.
Tourists today want four things in a hotel, Wirta added, and he plans to provide them: a room for around $100 a night, cleanliness, safety and a “free” breakfast bar.
Black Bear Diner
Also planned for the Sequim Holiday Inn is a Black Bear Diner, a franchise restaurant, next door.
George Hanson, the architect on the project, said Thursday that he anticipates a Feb. 1 ground-breaking for the 5,400-square-foot diner.
This summer and fall, Sequim has been enjoying relatively healthy tourist traffic, despite fluctuations in gasoline prices and stock markets.
In August, the Visitor Information Center at 1192 E. Washington St. counted 4,785 travelers, said Vickie Maples, executive director of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce.
That was a slight rise over the 4,772 counted at the center in August 2007.
Another modest increase followed when the center’s volunteers counted 1,407 visitors in October, an uptick of 142 over that month last year.
The numbers dipped in November: That month in 2007 saw 856 visitors to the center, and this November the count was 822.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
