Spokane Clod Just Adores Penthouse View

A fire is flickering. The flowers are fresh. “Freesias,” exclaims my delighted wife, Sherry. “My favorite.”

She bends to sniff the fragrant, funnel-shaped petals artfully arranged with lilies and eucalyptus in a dark vase. The striking floral display perches on a piece of sheer glass supported from a beige wall by two ornate sconces.

Sherry beckons me for a whiff. Sorry, I tell her. Can’t make it. Too busy parking my wide load in one of two leather chairs that are soft as snowdrifts and face the fire at just the perfect warming distance.

Ahhh, here’s to the good life.

We have come to spend a night in the posh penthouse of the Hotel Lusso, Spokane’s new downtown luxury hotel.

Grandly occupying the corner of Sprague and Post, the Lusso, with its fountains and foliage, will never be confused for the El Cheapo Motel.

No tacky paper rings circle Lusso toilet seats. No clattering ice machines ruin your slumber. No cigarette burns or suspicious stains mar the carpets.

No such worries at the Lusso. The very name, in fact, means “luxury” in Italian, which unfortunately creates a problem in Spokane.

Luxury scares the hell out of us. We’re mostly simple, unassuming Eastern Washington folks who’d never dream of buying a Mercedes or gallivanting off to Aspen for a spirited round of ski football.

Luxury in Spokane is getting an extra splash of gravy on your hash browns at Knight’s Diner. Luxury is splurging for a new pair of shoes at the Nordstrom basement half-price racks.

So the Lusso’s image will scare away a lot of people, and that’s a shame.

First, the tasteful rooms, decorated in soothing earth tones, aren’t all that outrageous at $110-$250. Even more reasonable when you get the newspaper to pick up the tab.

The Lusso’s designers have done a masterful job of merging two vintage Spokane buildings - the 1889 Whitton and the 1890 Miller - into something altogether unique.

Once inside the mazelike hotel, it’s nearly impossible to guess where the Whitton leaves off and the Miller begins. Floors lean. Doorways lead to nowhere. Rooms have 14-foot ceilings and come in an assortment of unorthodox sizes.

Owner Joe Dinnison insisted on keeping much of the buildings’ original dimensions rather than gutting the place and stamping out cookie-cutter rooms.

As a result the Lusso oozes character. But here’s the best part: The hotel is so well insulated and so captivatingly different that guests will forget they are still stuck in Spokane, just 50 yards away from all the riffraff outside the bus station.

Of course, one can always draw a blind and get back to reality. The view from the penthouse takes in the Davenport Hotel and old steam plant stacks to the south and the Peyton Building to the east.

Our stay was molto Lusso. When the wait for a table inside Fugazzi’s restaurant proves too long, we are served inside the hotel dining room where we eat romantically by ourselves.

The bathrooms are to kill for, huge and awash in marble.

Fresh orange juice and scones in the morning. Yum.

There are, however, a few kinks that must be worked out to attract more people of our kind:

A room that rents for $199 a night should have a music system better than a tinny clock radio.

There were plenty of note pads for guests to steal, but no pens. What’s the deal?

Oh, and get rid of that annoyingly harsh elevator beeper. It squawks like a wounded rooster with each passing floor. Jarring noises are so un-Lusso.

Calamity really strikes when our bathtub Jacuzzi doesn’t work. Bet they wouldn’t pull that on Martha Stewart.

I stop short of dialing 911 and call the desk. A friendly bellman arrives minutes later to fix the problem, but by then Sherry is languishing in the tub.

“Sorry, buster,” I tell the smiling man. “I don’t care if this is a luxury hotel. You’re not getting that big of a tip.”

, DataTimes