At Thursday’s grand opening of Hampton Inns, the hundred or so visitors enjoyed local beer and wine, and chocolates, ate freshly prepared pizza and wings, and you could say some gladly ate a little crow.
General manager Tim Pyle and staff greeted visitors, along with members of the partnering Naito Corp., Bob and Steve Naito. The hotel opened in July.
“As much as I am loath to admit, everybody won,” said Steve Naito, who serves as Naito Corp.’s attorney, referring to the controversy that surrounded the original proposal in 2012 to build the hotel next to the waterfront.
Then Mayor Arthur Babitz brokered a deal with Naito Corp. to site the hotel (and to-be-constructed commercial building) fully to the south of the beach area, and the city worked with Friends of the Waterfront and Columbia Riverkeeper to purchase the beach area, a former boat-building industrial site, as a conservation easement. Riverkeeper is already working on rehabilitation of the passive park area.
“Believe it or not, the rest of the development turned out to be better than it would have been if we had developed into the park. So, it just goes to show, the rest of the development turned out better than it would have been,” Naito told the Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours ribbon-cutting audience.
“The hotel (proposal) started four years ago, and we were trying to do a cable park in addition, and we realized that a lot of people in the city didn’t want this property development, but the lawyer in me said, ‘this is our —-damned property, we can do what we want,’” Naito said. “The proposal went to Land Use Board of Appeals and Court of Appeals, a year and a half ago we were absolutely dead stopped. We had just lost at Court of Appeals. It was dead. I was dead. My brother said, ‘We need to settle.’” Without the cable park, and without direct access to the beach.
“With help from Arthur Babitz and Friends of Hood River Waterfront, we reached a resolution, but with the property in front of us forever protected as a conservation easement,” Naito said to applause.
Now, Naito admits, the walkway and road to the popular Spit recreation area is “a valuable community asset that people are really starting to use,” and pointed to its connection to downtown and to the neighboring History Museum of Hood River County, located just east across the Hood River footbridge.
Proceeds from the grand opening silent auction will go the museum, and while the amount was not known at press time, Museum Director Lynn Orr said it will be a significant amount for the museum, and it marks the start of an ongoing relationship. “Bob has reached out in a generous way,” she said. The museum presented a certificate thanking the Naito family, and gave the hotel copies of Connie Nice’s book, “Historic Hood River” for placement in each room.
The same walkway also connects to the slough trail that leads to downtown, and Naito said the company is working with the city to install signage to better identify the trail and where it leads. Pyle added that the company is working with the city on a plan to install lighting under the overpass, to make it more attractive to hotel guests and the general public.
Naito said the pathway has “been discovered” by hotel guests, who regularly take it to get to downtown restaurants and businesses.
The original designs put the hotel next to the water, based on the developer’s flowage easement rights, and featured a “cable park” over the basin itself, which would have carried users over the water on a horizontal lift. The cable park received ample opposition and the idea, along with the hotel itself, was all but abandoned.
“The only way we could do it was to surrender it, and being the lawyer, I told my brother, ‘Over my dead body,’ and he finally said, ‘Just shut up and let me do the deal,’” Naito said.
Now, he acknowledges, “It’s a good design and efficient use of space because the hotel doesn’t have much parking during the day,” and by sharing the lot with the commercial area, it needed to put down less asphalt.
Pyle said Hampton Inns, with 88 rooms, a pool and workout space, has been busy since it opened a month ago. “We’re happy to be here and part of the community,” he said.
“Our putting on this party is a way of saying ‘welcome, we’re here, and come into our house,’” said housekeeper Brenda Ortigoza of Hood River, who is training to work at the front desk.
“I’ve worked at other hotels and I really enjoy working for this one, because everyone who works here is like a huge family and we all put our effort and work into it,” Ortigoza said.
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