Published July 2001

Hotel plans major renovation project

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

The company that manages the Everett Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel wants to make it the “premier hotel/meeting center between Seattle and Vancouver.” To do that, major renovations are in the works.

Over the next 18 months, Seattle-based Northwest Lodging International (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of Toronto-based AFM Hospitality Corp., and the hotel’s owners will invest a little more than a million dollars into the hotel. The funding will go toward giving the facility’s exterior a more contemporary color scheme, renovating the ballrooms and retrofitting the building for energy conservation purposes, according to company executives.

AFM also plans to create more “executive rooms,” which include high-speed Internet access and “work office” space to go along with the guestrooms’ other amenities. Already, the hotel, located at 3105 Pine St., has a couple of corporate floors with such rooms.

“Our goal is to continue to reposition the hotel to be the finest conference hotel between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.,” AFM Chairman Lawrence Horwitz said about the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel, which has 250 guestrooms and more than 14,000 square feet of meeting room space.

The major renovations are in addition to the $168,000 in repairs and maintenance slated for this year, Horwitz said.

Those smaller projects include new exterior doors, new lobby carpet, new banquet chairs, an upgrade in the hotel’s phone system and voice mail, new sheers and drapes, new guest room tables and lamps for all guestrooms as well as 42 new double vanity sinks, said Ian Fee, who recently joined the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel as General Manager after nearly eight years with the Embassy Suites in Bellevue.

Along with improving the facility and building relationships with its corporate accounts, Fee is looking forward to raising the hotel’s profile in the community. Since being hired in April, he has made it a point to represent the hotel at Everett Area Chamber of Commerce networking breakfasts.

Horwitz also sees the need to improve such a relationship.

“We’re trying more actively to participate with the community: hosting more community breakfasts, tie in with sports teams, businesses and the like,” he said.

All this comes at a time when hotels have been popping up throughout the county, including the Courtyard by Marriott, Hampton Inn & Suites and Extended StayAmerica in Lynnwood and the Hawthorn Inn & Suites in the Smokey Point neighborhood of Arlington.

The added competition has “put us on our toes to look for ways to improve our facilities, improve our service and find ways to give our guests more for less,” Horwitz said.

“Our hardest challenge right now is convincing people we’re not part of the Pacific Avenue closure,” he said, referring to the ongoing Everett Station construction. “Pacific Avenue is closed, but the Howard Johnson is open for business.”

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