Freeway Mediocrity Invades Historic Town .. As If That's News
Written: Sep 27 '02 (Updated Oct 01 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: When inside, you can't see it. Nice views of the rain and mtns in back.
Cons: Everything else.
The Bottom Line: A standard off-the-shelf hotel with staff trained to act like robots. In other words, nothing unusual for freeway-America, but an insult to Juneau.
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Goldbelt Hotel Juneau |
If you let an online travel service lead you around Juneau, you're likely to be pointed to the Goldbelt as the largest full-service mid-priced lodging. And if you're a frequent traveller, you may consider the Goldbelt just fine. Because there is absolutely nothing about this hotel -- nothing -- that would distinguish it from the things that sprout on ringroads in American suburbia everywhere.
Sitting where it is, on the edge of a spectacular historic downtown, facing the bay, with views of hanging valleys and (rain permitting) glaciers on all sides, this standard, off-the-shelf box of a hotel is a tribute to the worst of prefab culture.
If you travel much, you know what I mean by a prefab suburban hotel. It's boxy, though sometimes trivially ornamented, with 3-10 floors, and bears no architectural relationship to anything around it. It has comically slow hydraulic elevators. You are required to use these elevators because the stairs, if you ever find them, deposit you out the backside of the building through a featureless one-way door. Often, you come out right next to the dumpster.
The lack of useful internal stairs is so common in American prefab hotels that I've largely surrendered to it, just as I've surrendered to the prisonlike feeling that comes with not being able to open the window more than the regulation four inches. But while this stairway design is just irritating in most places, in Juneau it's truly idiotic if not downright dangerous. If the designers of this hotel (or its installers, rather) had been thinking for a moment about where they were, they'd have realized that here, of all places, you need workable stairs that actually connect the inside of the building.
Juneau, you see, is not on the North American power grid. It has its own little micro-utility powered by some dams way way up by those glaciers. And as with most things micro, things that break can take a while to fix, especially if you're also not on the North American road network. Parts must be flown in from Anchorage, etc.
I've visited Juneau three times, and two of those times there's been a citywide power outage. One of them lasted several hours. Inquiring of the Goldbelt staff about how to reach my room, they politely directed me outside the building and around to the back side (no awnings back there, of course, even though it's usually raining). Right next to the dumpster, they said, they have a door propped open. Go up through past the garbage room, through the laundry room, turn right, then left, and you'll find a door that leads into the stairs.
I thought of the Baranof Hotel, Juneau's expensive place where the Gucci lobbyists stay. There, as in most grand hotels, a stairway goes up from ... the lobby! Why is this feature, so graceful and so useful in power outages, now reserved for the very rich?
Service? A stereotypical we-just-work-here vibe emanates from almost everyone, shining right through the pasted smiles. Clearly, this is a big chain where locals, desperate for any job, mouth the corporate line, which so dictates their every move that it leaves torpor as their only mode of genuine self-expression. The result is a service style that matches the architecture. It says: "We may be interesting people, but for you, we'll pretend we aren't."
Again, the Goldbelt is fine. If you're used to suburban hotel-boxes, this one will meet all your expectations. But you're in one of the most unusual cities in North America, and you deserve something better. Check out the Silverbow (see review), where they say "have a good day" and actually mean it, and where you won't be able to pretend, even for a moment, that there's anything ordinary about where you are.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
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