After a brief interval as a religious retreat, Alderbrook Resort has a classy new look
For generations, this resort — founded in 1913 — and the neighboring miles of holiday homes edging the far-flung end of Hood Canal have represented a special summer place, with days full of boating, clamming, swimming and weenie roasts. Families came back year after year. Now, old fans are taking a fresh look at the resort, which reopened in June after a nearly two-year, $12 million rebuild.
"What they've done here is really great," said Vern Toedtli of Vancouver, Wash., who started coming for getaways with his wife, Doris, 15 years ago. "Such a homey, homey feel," Doris Toedtli said.
As they awaited breakfast in Alderbrook's waterfront restaurant with an eye-bugging view of Mount Washington and other Olympic peaks, Vern confided, "We always enjoyed it before, but it was really in need of an upgrade."
You won't recognize the place. Where once a boxy, battleship-gray inn — an incarnation from the 1970s — hugged a woodsy, narrow stretch of Highway 106, now sits a classic lodge with a strong craftsman influence: soaring chimney, pitched roofs, and a stone-pillared covered driveway to welcome guests during even the moistest weather in this mossy part of the world.
The new lodge stands out because, among other things, new owners spent millions rerouting a half-mile of the highway to make more room for the resort.
The rich and famous
The new ownership isn't quite all in the family, but it is all in the neighborhood. The owner is North Forty Lodging, owned by Jeff Raikes, Microsoft vice president and part owner of the Mariners.
Raikes also owns a holiday home adjoining the resort's 88 acres. Other neighboring vacation homes belong to families named Gates and Nordstrom. Yes, that Gates. That Nordstrom. (Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the senior William Gates and his wife, Mimi, and John and Sally Nordstrom were among guests at a celebratory lunch at the resort's grand opening.) It might not be too big a stretch to call this quiet backwater the Martha's Vineyard of Western Washington — where our wealthiest go to wear flip-flops and shuck their own oysters.
By renovating Alderbrook, Raikes has fixed the future of what was becoming a down-on-its-heels neighbor. After many years as a resort, Alderbrook had sold in 1998 to nonprofit Crista Ministries, whose dream of creating a thriving Christian retreat here didn't pencil out.
Another benefit to the neighborhood: Moving the highway has given adjacent homes a significant setback from the road, equaling more privacy and security for the resort's notable neighhbors.
After acquiring Alderbrook in late 2001, the new owners closed the resort in September 2002, not to reopen for 21 months. For "benchmarks" in the makeover, North Forty president Brian McGinnis said, they visited Skamania Lodge in the Columbia Gorge, Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls, Salishan and Sunriver lodges in Oregon, and waterfront inns from Blaine to Port Ludlow. Dan Foltz of Bellevue's Collins Woerman firm was lead architect.
They didn't skimp. The wrinkled old resort got much more than a Botox facelift.
Blending with nature
Once you're past the mercilessly clearcut hillside that made way for the rerouted highway out front, the new Alderbrook is a classy complement to its natural setting.
The covered entrance leads into a two-story-high lobby with a 6-foot-wide fireplace in the massive stone chimney. A dozen peeled tree trunks and jutting buttresses — designed to suggest tree branches — support the ceiling. Large leather sofas and overstuffed chairs front the fireplace, with upholstery and carpets in browns, burgundy, soft greens and purple, next to gleaming wood sideboards. A wall of gray barn-board backs library shelves at one end of the room, and Native American masks by Skokomish tribal artist Pete Peterson peer from an alcove in the stone.
"It's eclectic," said Pamela Graber, the resort's general manager, a Seattle native who came to her new post from a stint as executive director of the Waldorf Towers in New York City. She said the juxtaposition of old and new materials reflects the tradition of a family's vacation cabin, where each generation saves some favorite old furnishings and brings in some of their own.
"The carpet here is kind of 'mod,' whereas the fireplace and chimney are like old WPA lodges. We've tried to incorporate the feel that it's an easy, comfortable place to be, trying to give the feeling that a lot of people have been here before."
The fun old photos certainly carry that forth.
The casual theme extends to the soft polo shirts worn by staff. There's no doorman out front. If you ask for a bellhop or a concierge, the clerk who just checked you in is liable to step out from behind the front desk and say, "That's me."
Welcome little extras
Like the lobby, there's nothing cookie-cutter about the rest of the hotel. Some recently built Northwest lodges — Skamania comes to mind, and Heathman Lodge in Vancouver, Wash. — spared little effort on the lobby fireplace and common areas but put guests in rooms that could be in a Ramada.
At Alderbrook, Dawson Design Associates of Seattle has put bold carpets and distinctive lamps throughout, and furnished guest rooms with quality and comfort. (Little extras included a leather hassock by a mirrored vanity table, which my wife would like. For me: Instead of a midget Mr. Coffee and a one-eighth-teaspoon sugar packet, wake-up supplies featured a full-size electric kettle and everything a grateful Seattleite needed to make good French-press brew on a chilly morning.)
Along with small decks or patios, most of the 77 guest rooms have cushioned window seats for reading on a rainy day. Beds feature hardwood headboards, puffy quilts, downy comforters and enough pillows to please a preteen slumber party.
The room, in easy-eye colors of what I'd hazard to call avocado and suede, had an antique-finish armoire that hid not only a small fridge, ironing board and safe, but a 27-inch TV with — hallelujah — a DVD player. In the bathroom, a tub big enough for two made me wish I wasn't traveling solo. For further indulgence, there's a new 3,500-square-foot day spa.
Views vary. Ground-floor rooms look out on a courtyard's manmade waterfalls, manicured lawn and native plantings beneath ancient Douglas firs. In the distance: the water and Olympics. Upstairs rooms see more saltwater. Some top-story rooms in the rehabbed "old wing" command box-seat panoramas of mountains, water and wildlife.
The call of the wild
"We get raccoons and deer and seals right here," server Margaret Pugh said, nodding out the restaurant window as she brought my breakfast of eggs, hash browns, apple sausage and toast ($8). She's known this area since her parents bought vacation property 30 years ago. "Last year we had a pod of transient orca whales down here."
Just below the restaurant window at the head of the resort's 1,500-foot dock is the mouth of a shallow creek, where this month guests may watch chum salmon flop and flounder out of the saltwater and upstream to spawn.
As part of the renovation, the stream underwent a careful restoration, too. In cooperation with the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group and the Skokomish Tribe, developers removed obstacles to salmon and improved the banks with rocks, boulders, stumps and plantings of snowberry, ferns, salal, alder and wild roses.
As they finished their breakfast, Vern and Doris Toedtli chatted about their previous day's visit to nearby Hoodsport Winery and recalled favorite outings to buy oysters at Hama Hama Seafood, or rent a pedal boat at the resort's dock. They said they'll be back more often now.
"It's a relaxing saltwater waterfront without the ocean fog — most of the time! — and without the cold wind," Vern said.
Looking out at cool fog wisping up from Hood Canal this day, Doris took comfort in announcing, "We're headed to the spa this afternoon!"
Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com
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