Sundial Boutique Hotel,Whistler, British Columbia

   Stone is only one component of a CND$8.5 million makeover of the Sundial Boutique Hotel, an eight-story lodging and commercial property here. at the base of the Whistler and Blackcomb gondolas. But, says designer Bryce Rositch, it’s a new look that gets people talking.
   For Rositch, a principal in the Vancouver, B.C.-based Rositch Hemphill Architects, the project offered some major challenges. One was the condition of the building itself.
   “The building was built in two stages,” he explains. “The first two levels of commercial space were built in the early 1980s. The upper six floors of hotel suites were constructed in 1987-88. It was a building built under two different building codes, and we were asked to renovate it under a code that was three or four generations past that.”
   The other was its appearance. The hotel, which consists of 49 one- and two-bedroom suites, previously operated as the Westbrook Hotel. Rositch says that despite its prominent location, long-term visitors to the resort had trouble identifying it.
   “It was so plain that when you’d ask people, ‘What do you think of the Westbrook Hotel?’ they’d often say, ‘Which building is that?’” he says. “It has a wonderful location, but it needed a real makeover on the outside to give it a stronger identity and the look of a more-cosmopolitan, upscale boutique hotel.”
   Rositch believes his firm was hired by owner David Demers and his partners based on its familiarity with hospitality and resort developments – including other hotel renovations – and its experience with other Whistler-area projects, which he says prepared the firm to work both with the climate and with city officials.
   The latter was particularly important, since Whistler has strict regulations on building appearance, and the design team spent several months with Whistler’s color consultant to develop an exterior palette for the building that would conform to the regulations while providing what Rositch describes as, “a huge amount of tarting up.”
  
WORKING INSIDE
   While Rositch was focusing on the exterior of the building, Demers turned the interior look of the hotel over to Seeton Shinkewski Design Group Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C. Project designer Fiona Rimmer says a mutual friend brought her together with the building’s owner.
   Despite not being hired by Rositch, Rimmer says the two worked in collaboration to give the project a unified appearance.
   “We collaborated in the sense that we reviewed the design concept for the exterior and then through the design process for the interiors, we brainstormed ideas for layouts, use of materials and design details,” she says. “We wanted to have a seamless approach from the interior to the exterior.”
   Demers says the designers were definitely instructed to incorporate stone elements into every aspect of the building, including the hotel suites.
   “We live in the mountains, which is predominantly stone and wood, and we wanted to bring that out in the building,” he says.
   For the suites, Rimmer came up with a design that incorporates slate flooring in the kitchens and baths, and granite countertops in the full-sized kitchens.
   “The slate was chosen after a review of a number of different materials,” Rimmer says. “We felt for the durability and aesthetics, the slate was the best option. It was also cost-effective, and it gives a more-natural feel than going with some of the other options.”
   The slate also offers a great deal of aesthetic appeal thanks to the variety of colors within each piece, which helps create a warm feel to the rooms in which it was used, Rimmer says. The use of granite for the countertops in the kitchens was pretty much expected, she adds.
   “It really brings this hotel up a notch compared with other facilities in other hotels in the Whistler area,” she says.
   The kitchens are an element of real collaboration between Rositch and Rimmer, she says. While the layouts of the suites remains little changed from those in the old Westbrook, the “U” configuration of the old kitchens has been modified into more of an “L” that includes a multi-use, custom-designed island for each unit – also topped in granite.
   Rositch says he’s quite impressed with their design and functionality.
   “We did a table that’s like an island in the kitchen with wrought-iron legs that are quite strong,” he says. “It’s designed to do double use. You can use it for food preparation, it’s at a comfortable height so you can stand next to it like people do at cocktail parties, but we have some leather upholstered stools, so it’s fine for dining if you want, too.”
   Choosing a dark-colored speckled granite for the countertops was an on-going process designed to work with the rest of the suites’ color palette, which includes the slate and yellow ceramic tiles above the counters, Rimmer says.
   At the request of the owners, Rimmer also features a stone floor in the hotel’s lobby area – although, rather than slate, the lobby floor is Pennsylvania bluestone.
   “It is a unique stone in Whistler,” she says. “The owners had used it previously and they really liked its look. We thought it would work well in the lobby, and the large pieces with large grout lines are quite appealing. Since it’s stone flooring, we know it will hold up.”
  
COMMERCIAL CHANGE
   The biggest changes to the bottom two commercial floors happened on the exterior of the building.
   “We have a new exterior finish on the walls, and all the windows were replaced,” says Rositch. “Because they’re on two levels, there’s a colonnade, and we changed the stair access. We put in some grand, sweeping stairs to the second floor colonnade and we added a terrific amount of stonework, so there’s a terrace area and stone walls. A lot of the exterior treatment was changed.” 
   For the exterior, the designer chose to go with Huckleberry basalt in a 3”-5” bed depth. The stone is native to the Pacific Northwest, and supplied by Northwest Landscape and Stone Supply Co. of Burnaby, B.C., which also does business under the name Huckleberry Stone Supply Ltd.
   Northwest Landscape’s Dave Robertson, explains the company is the biggest basalt supplier in the area, with a quarry between Squamish, B.C., and Whistler.
   “Because it’s quarried in the area, it’s very popular in the Whistler area,” Robertson says. “This job was about 7,000 ft², but we just finished another job in Whistler that was for six times that.”
   “It’s appealing for a number of reasons,” Rositch says. “It’s found locally and the colors seem appropriate to the Whistler setting. It’s also available in a number of sizes.”
   That was important, he explains, because mid-sized stones were used to face the columns at the base of the building using a dry mortar application. Larger-sized stones were used in an inset pattern within the concrete stairs and in concrete bands around the terrace area.
   “Rather than just go with the stone, we decided to tumble it to take off some of the rough edges,” Rositch says. “It gives it a nice warmth, and since people will be sitting at tables, drinking lattes and eating fish-and-chips, we wanted to have the stone give a feeling of strength without feeling intimidating.”
   Rositch adds that the basalt also provides a good third element to the building’s external color palette, which is red and buff.
   Both with Northwest and with West Coast Granite Manufacturing Inc., of Vancouver, B.C., the suppliers of the interior stone, Rositch says the project had good sources.
   “We had great suppliers who said they could provide this, this and this,” he says. “With the interior, we’d ask for samples and then decide if we wanted more texture or less texture, more undulation in the floor, or more black or more brown in it. We were really able to fine tune how the stone should be.”
   While Rositch and his crew were coming up with an exterior look for the building, they were also concerned with what was inside the walls. Dan Marsolais, the project manager for general contractor Ventana Construction of Burnaby says roof leaks caused major problems to the structure.
   “Water ingress through the wall system particularly, and the window openings, had caused damage to the steel stud frame,” he says. “We had to take the entire exterior skin off and even replace some of the structure that was rusted and deteriorated.”
   Marsolais explains that his company was hired for the job partially because of the owners group’s awareness of Ventana’s reputation for meeting budgets and scheduled on challenging projects.
   “They were willing to proceed with this work when they had a general contractor they were comfortable with,” he says.
  
MAKING THE DEADLINE
   The actual start of the renovation was pushed back by about four months, Marsolais adds, because of the structural work required on the building, coupled with a delay in finalizing some necessary permits. Consequently, much of the renovation didn’t get underway until early May 2003.
   While stonework on the exterior began early in the process and continued past the scheduled completion date of mid-December, work on the stonework in the bathrooms started in June. Because of the scope of the project, which involved replacing all the flooring, repainting all the walls, replacing all the fireplaces, and installing new lighting and plumbing as well as kitchen appliances, the heaviest push in the kitchens didn’t come until October and November.
   To fabricate and install the job, Ventana chose Burnaby-based Mahovlich Marble and Granite Distributors Ltd. Both Marsolais and Frank Mahovlich agree the selection was based mainly on the stone company’s 30-plus years of experience.
   Mahovlich, who had nine people in the shop and 11 at the site working on the job, says the biggest problem with the Sundial project was the scheduling, particularly for the exterior work.
   “A lot of things weren’t ready,” he says. “They got a late start – we were scheduled to start much earlier in the year. Here, it gets cold and it starts to snow and you have to close everything in and it takes longer to do.”
   However, Mahovlich admits problems with scheduling seem to be more of a problem these days just in general.
   “They design the schedule by computer, but people aren’t computers and they get behind,” he says. “We’re always the last people to be there, too, because everybody else has to do their work before we can do ours.”
   Although the hotel began taking guests right before Christmas, both Marsolais and Mahovlich hoped to finish the exterior stonework by the end of January.
   “It’s very time-consuming work and they haven’t been working under ideal conditions,” Marsolais acknowledges. “We’ve had to heat the stone and heat the sand, so it’s been painstakingly show, but that’s the nature of stonework this time of the year.”
   Even with the stonework not quite completed, both Demers, the owner, and Rositch, the designer, say they’re quite pleased by what stone has done for the project. Demers says the Westbrook was a one-and-a-half star hotel, but with the renovation, he believes its rating has increased to four stars or higher in part due to the quality of the stone and the way it compliments the rest of the renovation.
   “I’m more than satisfied; I’m elated with what has taken place,” Demers says. “We’ve transformed a building that had no character into one that people come up to me on the street and congratulate me and say how beautiful it looks.”
   Rositch agrees. He says visitors might not have been able to identify the Westbrook, but that’s not the case now. He says even the taxi service has been taking calls at its dispatch center asking about the building.
   “People stop me and say, ‘Isn’t that a wonderful-looking building?’” Rositch concludes. “The people renting the commercial space have said it’s beyond their expectations and the people at the municipal hall in Whistler are really pleased with the transformation. And, if the taxi drivers are talking about it, that’s really good.”

Client: Sundial Boutique Hotel, Whistler, B.C.
Designer: Rositch Hemphill Architects, Vancouver, B.C.
Interior Designer: Seeton Shinkewski Design Group, Ltd., Vancouver, B.C.
General Contractor: Ventana Construction, Burnaby, B.C.
Stone Subcontractor/Fabricator: Mahovlich Marble and Granite Distributors Ltd., Burnaby, B.C.
Stone Suppliers: Northwest Landscape and Stone Supply Co., Burnaby, B.C., and West Coast Granite Manufacturing Inc., Vancouver, B.C.

This article first appeared in the February 2004 print edition of Stone Business. ©2004 Western Business Media Inc.