Inn takes flight
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, January 25, 2005
EVERETT – Work has begun near Paine Field on a new 102-room hotel that aims to serve visitors to the Boeing Co.’s plant and the new flight museum next door.
Snohomish County leaders and local business people gathered in a hangar at the airport on Tuesday to mark the official groundbreaking for the Hilton Garden Inn North Seattle/Everett.
At the ceremony, Hilton Hotels Corp. presented $50,000 to the Future of Flight Aviation Center &Boeing Tour.
Airport director Dave Waggoner said he was excited to see the hotel and museum both taking shape on the northwest corner of Paine Field.
“We’ve been working on the project for three or four years, and we’ve had the vision of a hotel there for seven to eight years, so this has been a long time coming,” he said.
The actual site work began about two weeks ago, said Tom Arnot of Beechwood Development LLC, the Wisconsin-based hotel company that owns the $7 million project. With luck, the hotel will open its doors in mid-September.
Beechwood has a track record of developing hotels near airports. Its Hilton Garden Inn in Oshkosh, Wis., is on the grounds of Wittman Regional Airport and next to the Experimental Aircraft Association Aviation Center and Museum. Its hotel in Grand Forks, N.D., faces the University of North Dakota Aerospace School.
“This is his fifth hotel for us, and he’s got a great reputation for knowing where to put hotels,” said William Fortier, senior vice president of franchise development for Hilton. “He’s one of our best developers.”
The county arguably has a glut of hotel and motel rooms, with about 5,000. Arnot said the Hilton Garden Inn’s unique location and the quality of the hotel, which will be one of only four full-service inns in the county, should set it apart.
The four-story hotel will include restaurant and meeting facilities, an indoor swimming pool and high-speed Internet access.
Just north of the new hotel, the $22 million Future of Flight museum is progressing on schedule toward a fall opening, said Bill Lewallen, Paine Field’s deputy director and project manager for the museum. Steel erectors will arrive next week to assemble the metal skeleton for the 73,000-square-foot building.
“In about two weeks, you’ll see a big change at the site,” he said. “We’ve been blessed with some good construction weather.”
The Boeing Co. tour already attracts about 100,000 visitors a year, making it the county’s largest tourist attraction. That number is expected to more than double, however, the first year the new flight center is open.
County Council Chairman Gary Nelson said the new Hilton Garden Inn will help boost local tourism by hosting everyone from airplane buyers visiting Boeing to aviation buffs on vacation.
“The facilities here are going to be quite a destination,” he said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Michael V. Martina / The Herald
Jim Riley (left), project manager for Sierra Construction Co., and engineer Darren Simpson of DCI Engineers assess the construction site of the Hilton Garden Inn near Paine Field in Everett.
