The Josie Hotel at Red Mountain is still under construction but has started booking for May.
The Rossland News took a tour of the hotel with Liz Day, marketing manager for the Josie, to get a glimpse of what everyone can expect.
Guests will pull up to the front door, where a valet will take their car and park it in the Josie’s underground car park. They’ll proceed through the door to the lobby, where old Red chairs will be a visual feature for the space.
From the lobby, guests can proceed to the second floor using either the main staircase or one of the elevators.
There they’ll find the Velvet Restaurant and Lounge to the left and a boardroom designed to seat 16 to the right.
Heading left from the Velvet, guests will reach a retail space and ski concierge.
Guests can ski straight to the hotel, where they walk down a short ramp to the ski concierge door. There they can drop off their ski equipment and have it tuned up if they so wish.
“We’ll also have rentals,” says Day.
To the right of the Velvet, guests will find the ballroom, with a capacity for 88 guests that can also be split into three different spaces for events, meetings or other rentals. The ballroom opens up onto a deck that can seat 106 people and faces away from Red with a view of the opposing mountains.
The Josie’s top three floors are where guests will find their rooms.
The hotel has 106 in total — nine one-bedroom suites, 14 studio suites, 30 guest rooms with two queen beds and 53 guest rooms with one king bed.
Each room of the hotel offers some kind of a view, and many of them face onto the slopes.
One of the rooms on the fifth floor offers such a close view of the Silverlode chairlift that as we stood looking out the window, skiers and boarders below waved up at us.
Song Chia, design director at Fab Studio, said it was a challenge to get enough sight lines from as many rooms as possible.
“It also helps that it’s on a little bit of a promontory,” he said. “If you consider that it’s on high ground and it overlooks the mountain as it drops down towards town, there are views not just up to the mountain on both sides, but down to the valley as well.”
Chia went to college in the Kootenays and picked up skiing at Red Mountain, which ultimately led him to design the Josie.
“We were working for the client on another project in Texas and they had mentioned that they were doing this other project in Rossland and do I know where it is? I told them the story of how I was up there in community college and I knew all about the mountain,” he said.
Fab Studio is working in partnership with Meiklejohn Architects out of Penticton on the project.
The colours in the rooms are warm earth tones and the linens will be 100 per cent, white cotton with an accent colour.
The third floor is also home to the gym and spa, where guests can get a mani-pedi or avail themselves of the spa’s treatments.
Day says the Josie Hotel is open for bookings for May.
“Both for bedrooms and for meetings and events,” she says.
Reservations can be made at thejosie.com.
