Hotel Libby owner plans to reopen within five years

One of Libby’s most prominent landmarks is on its way to total renovation after years of neglect and an EPA overhaul.

Hotel Libby, across the street from the offices of The Western News on California Avenue, has sat empty for the better part of three decades as no one could figure out what to do with it.

Gail Burger, who grew up in the hotel when her family bought it in 1977, decided to change that, and has a five-year plan for total renovation and a grand reopening.

Hotel Libby, closed to the public for 33 years, is waiting for grants from federal historical societies to move forward and open the hotel to visitors by 2017. Libby’s busy summer months already have proved to Burger that not only will she be able to do business here, but the hotel would thrive.

“I was in the lobby during a big event and someone walked in and asked if I had a room,” she said. “I sort of laughed and said, “Yes I have a room, but you can’t rent it yet.” By the 10th time this happened, I stopped walking around in the lobby during events.”

   “If I were open today, I’d be full.”

   Burger had spent several decades in Alaska; removed from the historic hotel where she grew up. She got a job, married and kids and had somewhat placed the building on the back burner.

   Earlier this year, her husband got an idea on a whim.

   “He was driving to a board meeting, and he says, “Do you want to move?”” Burger said. “I said OK, where? He had no idea. So we moved back to the hotel.”

   Burger and her family live in a small apartment in the back of the hotel now, where a barber shop, lawyer and dentist office used to be.

   After the EPA came through two years ago and totally ripped out, replaced and cemented over parts of the hotel that may have been toxic, much of Burger’s work revolves around restoring the building to pre-World War II conditions.

   “I told (the EPA) if they took anything I was going to hunt them down,” Burger said. 

   Construction on the hotel began in 1898 and wasn’t opened until 1910 after being beset by a host of problems. The winters made construction for more than half of the year difficult, the logistics of building a luxury hotel in a small town in the mountains were a nightmare and in 1906 the builders were even beset by a fire, the scorch marks of which are still readily visible on the west end of the third floor.

   Electricity and running water didn’t come to the hotel until 1911, creating some…interesting problems in the restrooms.

   “There was no running water in the urinal,” Burger said, after pointing out the original white pine still forming the walls of the men’s room. “They put a block of ice in it and figured the men’s body heat would help wash it away.”

   The Rice family bought the hotel and made changes in the 1940s, much to Burger’s modern consternation.

   “Why would you put this here?” she angrily gestured to several cookie cutter rooms on the first floor, built not for aesthetics but for cost-saving measures. “These “boxes” just don’t fit in here.”

   For this reason, Burger is restoring the hotel not to 1950s standards, but she has a different reason for choosing to restore to 1930 and not the original date, 1910.

   “Everything sucked in 1910,” she laughed.

   Burger’s crusade against the Rice additions may sound like food-themed warfare but actually add to her grant writing to historical registers to get the building finished.

   “They pulled back on one grant,” Burger said. “But we’ve still got two we’re waiting to hear back on. It’s all on when the government decides.”

   Since moving back to the hotel in May, the Burgers are taking slow but sure steps to getting the pride of Libby back to its early-20th century roots, when it was considered “the best hotel from Spokane to the Dakotas” and was a frequent stop for those taking the train to Seattle or Chicago. 

   Her husband has reseeded the yard around a tree her father planted decades ago; the Lobby is swept and cleaned, as is the third floor.

   The second floor is…a work in progress. The bare beams running where walls used to be let any visitor know the entire hotel is almost literally being built up from the bare bones.

   Does she ever worry about having kids in a large construction site?

   Well, yes, but maybe not for the reasons you think. Her kids have mischievously taken to scribbling the word “Redrum” on dusty mirrors lying around, an homage to Stephen King’s The Shining, a story based, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, in a hotel.

   Light-hearted shenanigans aside, the hotel can be undeniably spooky, leaving surprises and mysteries for even a history buff and native like Burger.

   At least two times during the tour of the hotel, she pointed out a long shut door or sealed off nook of the building and simply shrugged. 

   “We don’t know what’s behind that,” she said.

   One door in the floor that was removed was done so rather reluctantly by her husband.

   “Gail, if I find a skeleton down here, you’re dead,” she recalled him saying.

   The Northwest corner of the second floor is one of particular interest to Burger, because for a long time no one seemed to remember it was there.

   The corner room had been sealed off with drywall until her father and uncle wanted to get to that corner’s window for a view of a parade. What they found was room number 13, with a lovely dark stain directly in the middle.

   Burger’s designated “ghost-detector,” a black cat named Edgar (“because every spooky hotel needs a black cat”), refuses to go into this room, as well as a certain section of the basement.

   But don’t worry, Edgar will be there when Hotel Libby opens its doors to the public for the first time in three decades this Halloween as Burger has decided to allow trick-or-treaters into her lobby from 7 to 9 p.m.

   Because after all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.