The Robert Service School runs for Terry Fox on the Friday before the actual town run This year the high school’s 101 students raised $1100.00 for the cause of cancer research. The Grade 7 class was responsible for bringing in $650.00 of that total. There was a separate run for the elementary classes which raised the tally to over $1500.00. Photo by Dan Davidson

Welcome to the September 27, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the September 21 newsstand edition.

The Sun has only recently been updated on the web after a hiatus since the January 16/04 issue. Current issues are now available on the site, and the archives from 1996-2003 are linked to this site. There is now a search engine which can search all issues from the beginning in 1996.

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On a gray day in early September one of the last Holland-America buses of the season pulls up at the doorstep of the Westmark Dawson while construction on the hotel’s addition is already under way for 2006. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Westmark Expanding Dawson Operation

by Dan Davidson

Perhaps the move comes in anticipation of a plan to offer tours of Tombstone Territorial park, but Steve Leonard, vice-president and general manager of Westmark Hotels, says that the Holland America hotel is already moving on an expansion of its Westmark Dawson Inn.

“We’re adding about 44 rooms,” he said from his office in Seattle. “We’re gonna have them ready for the 2006 season.”

It’s only been three years since the company completed a major expansion across Fifth Avenue from it’s original building, and that itself had been the third expansion since the 1990s.

“We’re looking to add some more tours and trying to strengthen our whole Yukon product,” Leonard said, adding that not only Dawson was bring affected.

“We’ll be starting a significant renovation on the exterior of the Westmark Whitehorse in another six or eight days too.”

Beaver Creek is in “good shape” he said and did not need any attention.

“The bulk of our tours go through Dawson now. It’s a much more popular run with tri-modal transportation. You know, they’re on the train, on motor coaches and they’re on the boat up the river or down the river. So it’s a very popular tour.”

“For the first time (since then) I can say that it was better than the year before.”

Westmark had a good summer in the Yukon, the best since the 9/11 disaster of 2001.

This means a healthy increase in numbers, since the company adjusted its rates to capture a less affluent socioeconomic clientele after 9/11 and Leonard says they still haven’t recaptured that market.

“That’s still true unfortunately.”

He says that bookings and occupied seats are now climbing rather than declining.

“But we’re still not up to the rate levels, or per diem levels that we were prior to 9/11.

“We’re trying to get back there, and Holland America is spending - well, they’re spending a quarter of a billion dollars on upgrading the ships.”

Beds, facilities and menus will be improved over the fleet of ten ships on the Yukon-Alaska routes.

While the Yukon Queen II was unable to operate on the river for 10 or 11 days last summer, Leonard is still happy with the way things worked out and full of praise for the operators of Moose Creek Lodge, which came to the aid of the one full coach that got turned around due to the fires.

“They took care of those people. At about 9 o’clock at night a busload of those people pulled into Moose Creek Lodge and they all pulled together and fed them. They weren’t expecting forty-five or fifty passengers, but they did a good job.

As the last coaches of the season lined up at the front door on Fifth Avenue, the foundation for a two story expansion was being added to the north end of the newest part of the hotel, taking up most of the former coach parking area and a half lot that had been occupied by an older home which has been moved.

There was talk of the company buying the lot which holds the town’s Youth Centre, which is for sale, and extending its holdings along the block to Princess Street. Leonard says his company was interested in the land, but not the building, and that the asking price was well above what he judged it to be worth.

For the last few years Holland America’s buses have been able to park at the hotel. With the expansion that won’t be possible, though Leonard says there will be enough parking spaces to meet the building code. Having the Youth Centre lot would have allowed that to continue.

“Maybe I’m naive and maybe they’re a little naive,” he said of his conversations with the town’s administration so far.

“It would be nice because the coaches could park right there easily, but if I can’t make that work, we’ll do something else.”