Travelodge Planned Downtown New Hotel To Be Built Near Convention Center
One of the largest franchised hotel chains in North America soon will return to downtown Spokane.
Wayne and Mary Paupst of Spokane plan to build a Travelodge at the corner of Browne and Spokane Falls Boulevard, with a target opening date of July 1.
The Paupsts purchased five lots, totaling 35,500 square feet, for $550,000 last October from Budget Rent-A-Car. Their Travelodge will have 80 rooms on four stories, Wayne Paupst said.
“I am locked into Travelodge,” he said. “They’ve committed to me, and I’ve committed to them.”
Travelodge has been represented in Spokane before, most recently at First and Lincoln. That property was bought by Washington Water Power in June 1994 after oil seeping from an abandoned steam plant was discovered beneath it. WWP has since converted the hotel into Rodeway Inn City Center.
Travelodge’s director of franchise development for the Northwest said Paupst’s timing couldn’t be better.
“We’ve been looking for the right opportunity for Spokane for a while now,” Klein said. “It’s been a very high priority to find a real nice project.”
Travelodge presently has about 500 locations in North America, 100 in England and 25 in Mexico and South America.
Demand for Travelodge rooms in Spokane is high, Klein said. In 1995, the company’s reservation service turned away customers seeking an average of 300 rooms per month, he said.
Travelodge recently was purchased by HFS Inc., a franchise company whose hotel holdings include Days Inn, Howard Johnson’s, Ramada, Park Inn, Super 8 and Villager Lodge.
Paupst also owns Al’s Spa Tub Motel on North Division, which advertises adult movies and in-room spa tubs.
Paupst plans to pour $3 million into the Travelodge and hire between 15 and 20 employees. His daughter, a recent Eastern Washington University graduate, will assist with management. “It’s going to be a father-daughter enterprise,” Paupst said.
Paupst will try to attract business travelers with amenities such as a business center with computers and copy machines, a voice mail phone system, an exercise room and a continental breakfast lounge.
His four deluxe suites will be “plush, as nice as anything you’ll find in town,” Paupst said.
“It’s fair to say it’ll probably be one of the nicer Travelodges in the Northwest,” Klein said.
Paupst said his primary competition will be other “limited service” hotels, such as the Holiday Inn Express, at 801 N. Division and the Fairfield Inn By Marriott at 311 N. Riverpoint Blvd.
With plans to charge between $45 and $65 for single and double rooms respectively, Paupst will slightly undercut his competition. The Fairfield charges between $65 and $75 for standard single and double rooms. The Holiday Inn Express charges $59 for a single and $64 for a double.
The Travelodge’s 80 rooms will bring total hotel rooms in the greater Spokane area up to 5,080, said Martha Lou Wheatley, director of communications for the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. That’s a 45 percent increase from 1985, when about 3,500 hotel rooms existed in Spokane.
, DataTimes