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Peaks Resort and Spa Sporting a Cleaner, Brighter Interior

In the days just before the Christmas Holiday, the Peaks Resort Hotel and Spa, sporting a new “cleaner” interior, returned to a bustling tourist lodge with 140 guestrooms and all penthouses operational after a summer-long closure of all 176 rooms for renovation.

Although it remains uncertain if and when a deal will be reached from a prospective buyer to purchase the resort from current owner, The Blackstone Group, the Peaks opened Dec. 15 with a fresh look in its guestrooms and spa.

According to outgoing General Manager Eric Sather, renovation crews worked diligently until the Dec. 15 deadline to keep Blackstone’s promise to the town that the hotel would be open for the winter season. Sather recently took a hotel management job in Florida and will be leaving to fill that position this week.

“They worked around the clock,” Sather said in an interview last week. “Some of the furniture just came in before the opening. We really wanted to keep our commitment to the mayor and town council that we would open by Dec. 15.”

Last May, The Blackstone Group announced that was embarking on a $60 million renovation and refurbishment project that would change the look for the hotel-condo building that towers over Mountain Village. In June, construction on the renovation was halted when Blackstone put the hotel up for sale. Between the stop order on the renovation in June and Dec. 15, crews made do with what they had to make the five-star hotel acceptable for the region’s high-end business.

Probably the most notable difference to the basic guestrooms is the increased brightness with the new paint job each room received. Currently, the most basic guestroom costs somewhere between $199.00 $249.00 a night. Sather couldn’t elaborate on how much money went into the shortened version of the renovation but was in “the millions” of dollars.

“We wanted to clean everything up,” Sather said. “You can see that we whitewashed everything to brighten the rooms up rather than leaving the tan color.”

Guestrooms have new mattresses, bed-skirting, 400-thread count sheets and all new refrigerators. Most of the carpets in the guestrooms were deep-cleaned, as was bathroom grout, with many of the bathroom faucet fixtures in guestrooms being replaced as well.

The hallways leading through the arteries of the building were also repainted, with new logos attached to each guestroom door. Sather went on to say that the Great Room, which was bustling with après ski festivities during the interview, didn’t change much and that the bar and restaurant are now fully open.

Currently, the Peaks employs over 300 people full- and part-time. Bookings since the hotel’s reopening have been good, Sather said.

“This year, advance bookings are up, even with the fewer number of rooms we have available and the uncertainty people had about us,” he said.

The Golden Door Spa at the Peaks also received a face-lift with over $2 million in construction. Greeting guests at the entrance of the spa is a new desk with a newly installed shield made of horizontal bamboo. Treatment rooms were reduced from 40 to 32 to accommodate couple-treatment rooms.

The lap pool received a thorough cleaning and paint job while the fitness room received a new audio system and cardio machines are now sporting new individual television monitors. The spa no longer has racquetball courts as they were turned into yoga/Pilates studio.

“And rest assured,” Sather added. “We didn’t take away the waterslide. Parents are always coming here and telling me, “don’t take away that slide.’”

Sather expects the rest of the hotel to be renovated and completed sometime next summer. But for now, the hotel is fully operational with Legends open for breakfast and dinner and après ski in the Great Room available for weary skiers coming off the slopes.

Sather said it is too soon to quantify any feedback on the renovations from return visitors.

“We just opened so it is hard to tell what people think,” he said. “The people who were here last year are going to see some changes. With the uncertainty, people always think the worst. We worked six-days-a-week to get it up and running and it is fully functional.”

Sather will be replaced by interim general manager Daniel Mann, who is coming from a resort in Boca Raton, Fla.