TULALIP – The Tulalip Tribes plan to break ground this summer on a 13-story hotel and convention center in the middle of Quil Ceda Village.
Tribal officials plan to meet this week to complete the budget for the project and should be ready for bids from contractors shortly thereafter, Quil Ceda manager John McCoy said. Construction could begin in August.
The plan is for a 380-room hotel with convention space for 2,000 people, but it will be built for easy expansion, McCoy said. “We can add another tower if we need to.”
Tribal leaders are still discussing how luxurious the new hotel will be, he said. He described the current thinking as “three-star plus.”
“We don’t know if we’re going to go all the way to a five,” McCoy said.
The project will bring more competition for tourism and convention dollars in Snohomish County, which is just now starting to get back to pre-2001 levels, said Amy Spain, the interim director of the county’s Tourism Bureau.
However, a big, high-profile development could increase the county’s visibility, she said. And the convention center and attached hotel could draw new business from groups that aren’t considering Snohomish County now.
“If they are adding components that in our current marketplace are in limited supply, that’s a good thing,” Spain said.
In any case, a hotel amid the new Quil Ceda attractions will be “a very marketable product,” she said.
The hotel will sit on four or five acres between the Tulalip Casino and the recently opened Seattle Premium Outlets. It will be just west of the tribes’ new amphitheater, a 1,200-seat facility that’s set to open in July.
Construction will take about two years, he said.
McCoy said the tribes do not plan to affiliate the hotel with a national lodging chain, but will own and operate it themselves. Tribal members will be picked to get hotel management training.
In the past two years, the Tulalip tribes have rapidly expanded their Quil Ceda development. They opened their $78 million, 227,000-square-foot Tulalip Casino in June 2003, and last month they opened the $58 million, 383,000-square-foot outlet mall, which is home to 100 retailers.
The tribes also spent $1 million to renovate the original casino on Marine View Drive, which reopened as Quil Ceda Creek Casino last year.
Other ideas mentioned as possible additions to the Quil Ceda site include an amusement or water park, a recreational vehicle park, a golf course, restaurants and other retail, light manufacturing or business development.
“We’ve got a lot more to do,” McCoy said.
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