New hotel nearly finished

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

A new hotel is close to completion downtown. That’s according to the co-owner, Susan Johnson, who also owns the Best Western Kodiak Inn and Convention Center.

KMXT stopped by the hotel on Alder Way near the downtown Y.

Lee Robbins stands in the second level parking lot and points out the roof and a balcony.

“I love the view of the building back here.”

The hotel is on one side. And on the other side, there’s a large wall.

“This was a great big hillside, and we cut into it.”

They leveled off a chunk of land for the hotel, but the hill remains pretty steep.

The wall is like a dam, keeping the earth from spilling down onto the structure.

Robbins says the land preparation took about a year. He’s the project coordinator with Byler Contracting out of Wasilla and says they got to work in April 2017.

They’re nearly done now. He says he and the crew just wrapped up painting the walls.

And inside, you can almost imagine what it could look like with furniture and other finishing touches.

At least Robbins can.

“You can see what the projected stone’s gonna be on the fire place. That’s a fireplace over there. Chairs, tables, a big TV on that wall.”

Co-owner Susan Johnson says the three-story structure will provide 38 extra rooms, which she sees as a need in Kodiak’s tourism industry.

She says, in the past, the Best Western has had to turn people away and refer them to other hotels or B & Bs.

“What happened last year was some people actually flew back to Anchorage, stayed the night, and then came back the next day.”

She says the new hotel, Kodiak Compass Suites, is independent from the Best Western, and rooms will include more cooking features, like a full-sized fridge, a microwave, a sink, and a dishwasher.

“So that any long-term stay people such as construction workers, Coast Guard transfers, there are some government people that are here for around a month sometimes, just so a lot of those people will feel like they can stay in and create their own meals some nights versus  going out every night.”

The new hotel is just a short walk away from the Best Western Kodiak Inn.

Johnson’s parents owned the Best Western before she and her husband took over, and she says her father bought the Alder Way property years ago.

“And he had the idea of maybe adding on over in that space, but it never quite came into that during his time.”

Johnson announced plans to develop the land in 2016.

At the time, locals who had grown up on a neighboring property said that there had once been a historic Russian graveyard on the site.

That led to concern over the possibility of unearthing human remains.

The Kodiak Island Borough Community Development Director at the time, Bob Pederson, said in the case of finding remains, the owners would get into contact with the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology and the State Historic Preservation Office.

Johnson says they went through the permitting process and the construction went without incident as far as she knows.

She says work on the hotel should be complete by late April and they’ll hold an open house in May.