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Daily Astorian: Hotel's VIews Have No Peers
By KATE RAMSAYER
The Daily Astorian
kramsayer@dailyastorian.com
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LORI ASSA — The Daily Astorian
The expanse of the Cannery Pier Hotel lobby pairs an industrial feel with cozy furnishings. |
Cannery Pier Hotel ‘is the beginning of a complete renovation of the whole area’
When guests enter the Cannery Pier Hotel, it’s not the comfy couches or welcoming fire or exposed ceiling beams of the lobby that catches their eyes.
Instead, they’re immediately struck by the view through the lobby of the Columbia River, said Don West, the hotel’s general manager.
“We’re measuring the ‘jaw drop’ on people as they come in,” West said. “Literally, you don’t get a better view. We’re a 9-iron from the ships as they pass by.”
The hotel, built on 100-year-old pilings that used to support the Union Fishermen’s Cooperative Packing Co., has been open for a month now and is already getting repeat customers, West said.
Perhaps, after taking in the view that stretches toward the mouth of the Columbia, the guests appreciate the other features of the hotel.
Hotel owner and developer Robert “Jake” Jacob designed the hotel to resemble a cannery. The red-painted exterior is blocky with sloped roofs, and different portions look like they could have been added on over the years.
“We’ve had people come in here and say, ‘My God, you did a great renovation,’” West said of folks who thought the hotel was an actual old cannery building. “That was a great compliment.”
For the interior, the staff worked to keep up the cannery theme, while still being welcoming to guests.
“That was the hard part. We wanted to have the industrial feel, but have it plush and luxurious,” said interior designer Sarah Goodnough. To do that, she used clean styles and simple fabrics.
“We tried really hard to not have any frilly, flowery kind of furniture. We wanted to follow a Scandinavian design,” she said.
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LORI ASSA — The Daily Astorian
In the standard guest room, a clawfoot tub sits beneath a shuttered window which can be opened to see river views from the bathroom. |
The week before the hotel opened, she went on a “shopping spree” to buy the couches and chairs that sit in the lobby, a mixture of whites, beiges and reds in different shapes and fabrics and textures – everything from wicker chairs to red boxy cushion chairs.
“We just wanted to be unique, something different for Astoria,” she said. She added that this look – kind of a converted warehouse feel – is becoming popular.
The ceilings in the lobby stretch up to the third floor, and the exposed ventilation system, metal beams and wooden rafters contribute to the industrial feel.
The walls are decorated with prints of pictures of canneries and the workers and the fish processing lines from the Clatsop County Heritage Museum. The windows between the lobby and the manager’s office are replicas of the cannery windows where fishermen would bring their catch and obtain vouchers for pay, West said.
On the second floor, the hotel has a “History Walk” in the hallway, with displays illustrating topics like “Fun on the Columbia,” “Fishing on the Columbia,” horse seining and the bar pilots, among other things.
The rooms themselves are wider and longer than other hotel rooms, West said, and come standard with thermostat-controlled fireplaces, a hardwood-floored living area, a wet bar, window seat, marble counters in the bathroom, a metallic basin-style sink in the room, clawfoot tubs with a view through the room to the river beyond, balconies, and an unobstructed view of the river and the Astoria Bridge.
“We’ve done a lot of different things that people don’t normally see, but people like it because it’s not the same cookie cutter room," West said.
The hotel has 46 rooms, including seven suites and a penthouse; the regular rooms are $199 per night.
And the hotel was booked for its inaugural few weekends, West said. Now they’re working on filling up the weekdays.
The guests were a mix of people who had discovered the hotel on the Internet, who were recommended by other hotels that were full, who just saw the building from the highway, or who had heard about the place through word of mouth. Some guests are making reservations for future visits, West said.
He added that the hotel expects to have leisure travelers make up 70 percent of its guests, with the remaining rooms taken by tour groups and business travelers, including those who hold meetings or other events at the hotel. The Cannery Pier has two conference rooms, and is looking for organizations from across the Northwest to come to Astoria on business.
The hotel is actually just the first phase of the project; the developer plans to clean up the neighboring pier and add on 24 more guest rooms, restaurants, and docks. The Columbia Day Spa has opened a branch in the main hotel.
Plus, the area just west of the bridge will see even more commercial activity in the future. Developers of the Red Building, which looks out over the hotel pier, are getting ready to renovate that space, adding restaurants and shops and bringing people to an area that was “pretty much down and out for a number of years,” West said.
“It’s the beginning of a complete renovation of the whole area,” said Port of Astoria Executive Director Peter Gearin. The port has been working to improve that area, and although the hotel itself isn’t part of port property, the hotel is a way for people to visualize what the area will become with the new developments, Gearin said.
“You look to that and say ‘Yeah, this is really happening.’” |
