Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, December 5, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - The Yellowknife Inn is about to get a major makeover.

" Very expansive" is how the hotel manager, Derek Carmody, put it.

Nearly every space in the hotel - the rooms, corridors, bathrooms, lobby, conference rooms, as well as L'Atitudes Restaurant and the Mackenzie Lounge - will essentially be transformed.

" We're going to be gutting the entire hotel, from floor to floor, so that everything you see right now, you're not going to see it again," said Carmody. " Everything is going to be ripped out and replaced all brand-new."

Each room will be furnished with new carpeting, bedding, fixtures and cabinets made of maple.

The corridor walls will feature photographs documenting the history of Yellowknife, with images harkening back to the town's old days of bush pilots and float planes.

A glass wall - to be installed at the mall entrance of the hotel, accessible only by key card - will mark the new lobby.

Work has already begun on replacing all of the exterior windows in the building, which houses a total of 129 guest rooms.

The granite for the bathroom countertop was ordered from China.

" It's essentially going to be a new hotel by the time it's done," said Thom Jarvis, sales manager for the hotel.

The owner of the hotel, Royal Host REIST, first considered gutting the hotel in January, but has postponed those plans until March 17, following the Arctic Winter Games.

Carmody said he hopes all renovations will be complete by next September.

" We're trying to keep a warm, Northern feeling. When we started this, one of the thoughts was that we were going to change the name of the (hotel)," he said.

" But the Yellowknife Inn has such a history with the city, and a closeness to all of the elders in the community, that it was pretty much unanimous. We said, 'No, that's not the route to go.'"

The renovation project amounts to a lot of work for Carmody, who has been working many 16-hour days since taking the reins as manager early last year.

But he's glad to be the person to bring about change.

" Our customers have wanted this for a while," he said.

So far $1 million has been spent on the project, but Carmody was hesitant to elaborate on the projected cost of the entire venture.