Hotel's Transformation Draws Praise From Business Owners.

• Author: TORRES, VICKI
• Position: Brief Article

The Fairbanks Hotel was once home to drug dealers Now international tourists spend their vacations there.

Five years ago, the downtown Fair-banks Hotel was run-down and in need of more than a face-lift.

Drug dealers and after-hours booze peddlers lived on the first floor, selling illegal booty out the back windows. The hotel's 75-year-old owner, a retired Alaskan wilds teacher, rented rooms to down-on-their-luck transients and former students she pitied and kept off the freezing Fairbanks streets.

Today, after a change in ownership, the hotel is a sparkling Art-Deco-inspired, 36-room tourist hotel.

Japanese visitors, drawn by the aurora borealis, call the hotel kawaii, or cute. Sled dog fans enjoy annual races, run on downtown streets a block from the hotel. And hotel guests sign on for snowmachine and ice-fishing outings in winter, bicycle rentals and self-guided bike tours in summer.

"It was a real ugly box when I bought it, with some pretty scary-looking people as tenants," says the new owner, Doris Lundin, a first-time entrepreneur who transformed the hotel over five years.

Lundin did $250,000 in remodeling, made allies of police and aggressively marketed her hotel, including creation of a three-language Web site to attract international visitors. The result: The hotel, now out of the red, employs seven people and bookings are up.

Built 60 years ago and family run, the hotel was a workingman's residence, drawing Alaska Highway and trans-Alaska oil pipeline workers. But it deteriorated badly under later owners.

"Everybody told me it was a stupid idea to buy it," Lundin said. Undaunted, she set about reviving the property.

First, the cracker box exterior had to go, Lundin said. A graphic designer advised a more pleasing facade, with painted pink, three-hued arches and wing-like Art Deco design touches. That quirky paintjob alone made downtown business owners break into spontaneous applause at a meeting when they learned about the new owner.

Interiors presented more of a problem because Lundin needed cash flow while upgrading. The solution-floor-by-floor renovations-began with the gutting of the first floor, new sink installations, bathtub reconditioning, painting, recarpeting and first-time-ever connections for phones and televisions. Period 1940s wooden dressers, stripped of contact paper, sanded to remove cigarette burns and refinished, went back into rooms.

Second floor renovations were rushed a bit when Lundin received more...