New Glacier lodge planned

By Tara Nelson

Glacier residents could have more choices for entertainment and employment in 2006 with the proposed development of the 23,000-square-foot Mt. Baker Trailhead Lodge just east of Glacier on the corner of Mt. Baker and Old Mt. Baker highways.

Joseph Gracie, Rod Cheney and Bruce Koontz said they want to develop the lodge in order to accommodate the increase in tourism expected with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., but also to attract more people to the town during the off-season.

The town of 70 year-round residents has little industry other than tourism and attracts a hefty number of visitors during the summer and winter. Small businesses, however, struggle during the spring and fall months, Gracie said.

“It’s almost a ghost town six months out of the year and it overflows during the peak season,” he said. “You can’t run a business (in that kind of environment).”

Gracie, who moonlights as an author, recently published an internationally acclaimed book on child development, “Sign with Your Baby,”which was featured in the Hollywood movie, Meet the Fockers. The book explores how babies communicate non-verbally, and its video counterpart earned Gracie an Emmy award for the best educational video in 2001. The writer of the screenplay had used the book with his own children and had liked it so much, he decided to put it in the movie. That simple act caused a spike in sales.

Gracie said the financial bubble,however, lasted only a few weeks and he decided to reinvest the money into a sustainable community development project that would –hopefully – double as a retirement plan.

“I’m trying to take that money and put it to some good use,” he said. “At some point, it’s all going to collapse.”

The resort will consist of a pub,a restaurant featuring organic and locally produced food, a community center to host gatherings, art shows, poetry readings, concerts and other events and a cluster of six four-room cottages, each with a different design and different furniture.

“It’s going to be a boutique motel,” he said. “Not the cardboard cut-out type of rooms.”

Gracie said the resort was modeled after the concept of eco-tourism, the practice of visiting a place without harming the local economy. To accomplish this goal, he said the restaurant will serve organic, North-west-style cuisine such as wild Alaskan salmon, and he said he plans to use as many local ingredients as possible. His business partner, Rod Cheney, is a former fisherman and has connections for seafood, he said.

“We’re gonna go local first unless,of course, it’s unreasonable,” he said.

Glacier residents, such as Lou Piotrowski, showed their support for the idea during a Whatcom County Planning Commission hearing this June.

Piotrowski said the community needs a place where people can go and have a beer together and dance year round. He said the popular Chandelier restaurant used to offer such an atmosphere but it burned down a few years ago and no similar building has replaced it.

“I think that has been something that has been missing in our community,” he said. “What Joseph and Rodney have done is design a facility that fits into what we need in this community. We need a place that we can get together. And it provides more lodging, too.”

Neighboring business owners also responded positively to the lodge. Mountain Man Espresso and Deli co-owner Chris Hotchkiss, 32,of neighboring Maple Falls, said he welcomed the idea.

“We need more businesses up here, more commercial stuff,” he said. “I think it might create more jobs.”

Gracie said he expects the project to be completed by winter 2006. “We’ll be done when we’re finished,” he said. “The county’s been extremely helpful, but there’s so much red tape.”