Renovated downtown Redmond hotel ready for debut

By Geoff Folsom Spokesman | Dec 3, 2019

https://www.redmondspokesman.com/news/renovated-downtown-redmond-hotel-ready-for-debut/article_088f449e-12d7-11ea-8492-976740ecd236.html

After years of planning and millions of dollars in private and public money, what was once the New Redmond Hotel is reopening under a new name.

The renovated SCP Redmond includes 49 rooms, and is four stories high, including the top level, which is made up of a rooftop bar with its own garden. The building looks vastly different than it did just over a year ago, before the renovation of its lower floor and rooms began.

The new name reflects San Juan Capistrano, California-based owner Soul Community Planet, a subsidiary of Alpha Wave Investors LLC, a private equity firm. The company has one other SCP-branded hotel, in Colorado Springs, and co-owns the Depoe Bay Inn and Salishan Resort on the Oregon Coast.

“We’re honoring the past, yet we’re trying to move forward with the new hotel, which is SCP Redmond,” Tobias Colvin, general manager of the Redmond hotel, said of the name. “We branded it SCP Redmond, not Redmond Hotel, because it’s a lot more than a hotel.”

The project was a delicate balance between creating a modern space, while working with commissions to maintain the neo-Georgian architecture, making sure the hotel stayed on historic registries.

Showing off the hotel on a tour last week, Colvin said they were able to do that.

The Soul Community Planet name reflects the company’s commitment to personal wellness, social good and the environment, with 5% of profits going to charity, Colvin said.

One example of the environmental commitment is that SCP donates money to plant a tree for each guest who stays.

“In the long run, we want to be a profitable company, so we can go on for years and years and years, but the profits aren’t the most important thing,” he said.

Guests will enter the building, which opened in 1928 and has been closed since 2004, into an open lobby. A large stone fireplace is still there, but gone are walls of a vestibule within the lobby. Instead, cozy seating surrounds the fireplace.

“We wanted to give it a more open feeling, so people could wander and go through the area,” Colvin said.

The fireplace is double-sided, with the other half opening to the Provisions Market, which sells coffee and other drinks, along with locally-sourced food items. It is open to the public and can be staffed 24 hours a day. The coffee stand partners with Bend’s Back Porch Coffee Roasters.

“There are a lot of things you can get from China or across the country that are easy and cheap,” Colvin said. “But, to get them locally, it might be a little more expensive, but it’s the right thing to do.”

Also downstairs is a coworking space, where people who work remotely can set up shop and also use a conference room for an additional fee. Light music will be played in the space.

“We don’t want to distract you from your work, but we want to give you some ambiance,” Colvin said.

The membership fee, which starts at $100 a month, gives coworkers access to the hotel’s studio, with exercise equipment including Peloton stationary bikes. The studio has relaxing features like upright hammocks and planters designed in the shape of the Three Sisters (the real ones are visible from the rooftop on a clear day). Colvin said the room can be used for TED Talk-type speeches, as well as community events.

The rooms

The hotel, at 521 SW Sixth St., is having a $125-per-night special on room rates for December and January. That is for all rooms, including larger suites and its 14 Peaceful rooms. After the initial special, some room rates will increase to up to $179 per night, according to the hotel’s website.

The Peaceful rooms, which will cost more than standard rooms once the special ends, are in their own wings of the two guest room floors. The Peaceful rooms eschew typical hotel distractions like televisions, radios and clocks but include their own yoga mat, meditation pillow, sound machine and essential oils and calming teas.

The guest rooms are primarily white, to show a clean look, Colvin said. They feature the original windows, looking out over downtown, and hardwood floors. The number of rooms was reduced from 70 to 49, and five types of rooms, down from the original 17.

A draw to downtown

The rooftop bar, overlooking downtown and the Cascades, opened in August but closed to prepare for the hotel opening in recent weeks. But Colvin said the rooftop will be a year-round destination, with fire pits and herbs and vegetables growing. Along with cocktails, Colvin said it also serves special non-alcoholic drinks.

“Someone who doesn’t want to drink can sit with their friends and not feel the pressure,” he said.

Food in the rooftop bar is mostly tapas and small plates, inviting guests to go for larger dinners at other downtown eateries.

The hotel will have around 20 employees to start and expand that to between 30 and 35 people by the summer busy season, Colvin said. But even though summer is its big time of year now, the hotel welcomes skiers.

“We think our brand speaks to the skiing culture,” Colvin said. “People want a place they can relax and work out and come have a drink after they ski.”

The project has been at least seven years in the making. According to Bulletin archives, the city of Redmond’s urban renewal agency helped pay for about half of SCP Redmond’s $7 million cost. After the city initially agreed to loan $670,000, that was increased to $2.75 million once developers got inside and realized the scope of the project. The agreement includes a stipulation that the building remain a hotel for 30 years.

The urban renewal agency also provided another $830,000 in a low-interest loan.

“It really was a partnership between us and the city,” Colvin said.

Had they not gotten more assistance from the city, developers could have scaled back the project to include only the rooftop bar and coworking space, according to archives.

The hotel looks to serve as a catalyst for downtown, Colvin said.

“I think there are a lot of people out there who don’t know about Sixth Street, and what you can do if you give people an option for a date night that’s close by, without having to go to Bend or Sisters,” he said. “It will take off.”

Redmond Mayor George Endicott said he’s heard from one business that was looking at leaving downtown, but rethought that with the opening of the hotel.

“It’s an anchor facility,” he said. “You get people staying downtown. They are going to shop downtown and go to restaurants.”

Like with many historic hotels, longstanding rumors claim the hotel was haunted. Some have suggested it could be haunted by ghosts of when the original Redmond Hotel burned down in 1927, except for one problem — no one died in that blaze.

Colvin said many have worked late nights since the renovations began, and no one has reported seeing any ghosts.