Published February 2005

Bellingham hotel offers
views, meeting space

Photo by Ray S. Powers, courtesy of the Hotel Bellwether A private, 220-foot-long dock is one of the featured attractions at Hotel Bellwether on Bellingham Bay, one of the Northwest’s newest business conference, meeting and retreat venues.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

One of the newest conference and meeting venues in northwest Washington is Hotel Bellwether, an intimate, 66-room, European-styled, $16 million luxury development on Bellingham Bay in the heart of Bellingham that offers spectacular views of Puget Sound.

While most of the harbor still has an industrial flavor, this isolated spit of land toward the north end of the bay offers a surprisingly refreshing getaway environment only minutes from the downtown area and Interstate 5.

The comfortable, home-styled rooms include high-quality furnishings, Austrian linens, Hungarian down pillows, a gas fireplace and an array of electronic entertainment items, including a television, DVD payer, movie library and high-speed Internet links. The Harborside Bistro offers fine dining, and the Sunset Lounge has its own fine views of the water.

Most of the hotel’s guests are tourists, couples looking for romantic getaways or honeymooners who are fascinated with the very private three-story condominium Light House adjacent to the hotel and its 220-foot-long dock. Others are interested in the ample meeting facilities that owner Peter Paulsen has designed into the hotel — purposefully, not as an afterthought.

“Word spreads fast. We already have a lot of corporate (and government) business from King and Snohomish counties, including repeat visits from Microsoft and the city of Sammamish,” said Paulsen.

Just part of the hotel’s 13,500 square feet of meeting space, the Bellwether ballroom seats up to 350 people for banquets and up to 700 in a reception setting, providing views of Bellingham, the bay and the San Juan Islands.

There’s also the 5,000-square-foot Bayside Terrace for outdoor meetings; the Admiral and Garden rooms, each with a theater; the Compass room; the 320-square-foot Wine Cellar meeting room with its long table and high-backed chairs; plus the slightly smaller Boardroom.

Paulsen’s hotel development, which provides secure, weatherproof underground parking, also includes adjacent office buildings that have filled rapidly with physicians and financial services, while nearby buildings are home to a spa, jewelry store, art gallery, clothing store and a coffee shop with a cyber bar.

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