Fire jump-starts construction season.

• Position: Fire on Denali Princess Lodge gives boost to Fairbanks, Alaska-area contractors

Within minutes of reports of fire at the Denali Princess Lodge, company managers were planning for reconstruction. With tourists arriving this month, builders are working around the clock to rebuild.

Interior Alaska's construction season got an unexpectedly fast start this year, as the Denali Princess Lodge was partially destroyed by fire March 20 and a massive rebuilding effort began within 24 hours.

The leadership of Princess Tours, which owns the 282-room hotel on the Parks Highway, about a mile north of the entrance to Denali National Park, has vowed to open the lodge as planned on May 14. That decision has meant a huge boost for Fairbanks-area contractors, tradesmen and building material suppliers, as the tour company quickly committed millions of dollars to keep its season intact.

"We could build it more inexpensively if we weren't working 24 hours a day," says Dean Brown, Princess Tours' president. Their self-imposed deadline is to have the facility up and running to accommodate the first cruise ship passengers with package tours, he says, adding that Denali is a key component of the company's tours.

"Without a room at Denali for them, we can't provide their whole trip," Brown says. "If we don't have a room for them at Denali, then they don't visit Anchorage," or the rest of the state, with broad economic consequences, he says, for Princess and for all the towns the package tours visit.

The blaze, reported by an early morning passerby, is believed to have started with an oil-fired furnace in the main lobby. Hotel staff had recently arrived to prepare the complex for the tourist season, but the sprinkler system was not yet operational.

Three of the lodge's 11 buildings - including the main lobby, restaurant and office and two wings of guest rooms - were destroyed. Don Rosenberger, Princess Tours' vice president for rail operations and hotel construction, says the fire affected 156 guest rooms. The three buildings were connected by breezeways, and Brown says that part of the design will not be rebuilt as it may have helped the fire spread.

The company has the benefit of good timing in a certain sense: It already had the management team in place for another major construction effort, the $20 million-plus Mount McKinley Princess Lodge going up just north of Talkeetna. David Soderland, a Fairbanks native and projects engineer for Princess, was on the scene within 10 minutes of the...