Hotels: a big non-residential market for western wood

Major hotel corporations are finding wood-frame construction to be both economical and easier to design.for expansion into the suburbs. Three corporations alone will account for about I 53 million board feet of lumber by 1990. Lumber dealers looking to expand their business through industrial sales can capitalize on projects such as these in developing new sales-ed.

El EPAIR, remodeling and new housing starts are cer- I l tain to account for the lion's share of the lumber market in the 1990 s. But growing signs indicate that at least one sector of the non-residential market may also help to boost western lumber demand.

Within the past five years, three major hotel corporations have chosen to use wood-frame construction in planned expansions. The projects have the potential of using roughly 153 million board feet of lumber by 1990. Of these three, the Marriott Corp. of Bethesda, Md., will be the largest wood user, in a planned 300-hotel expansion.

"Most of Marriott's hotels in the past have been highrise structures in downtown areas, made of steel and concrete," said Doug Ketchum, Western Wood Products Association's Field Services District Manager for the Los Angeles Basin. "They are planning to expand into the suburbs, which is predominantly low-rise construction. There, wood is an ideal candidate."

Marriott hired the Pittsburgh firm of American Bridge Engineering to complete a structural and cost analysis of diflerent building materials. Ketchum assisted American Bridge with its year-long study, supplying it with information on materials, structural design and code considerations for low-rise wood-frame construction. The frrm recommended wood because it met design and fire code requirements, and was cost competitive with other materials, such as steel framing.

For similar reasons, architects from the San Diego,

Ca., firm of Mosher Drew Watson Ferguson also chose to build with wood when they designed a hotel called the Le l\4eridien San Diego at Coronado, Ca. In that project, WWPA District Manager Frank Stewart assisted in writing wood use specifications, locating materials sources and dealing with questions of code compliance.

Scheduled to open in May 1988, the three-story g50 million hotel will use more than two million board feet of western lumber. This includes nearly a quarter-million lineal feet of western red cedar and | .2 million board feet of Douglas fir studs.

In another project, architect Dennis Swets of Brown Raymond Boulton Szabo designed a four-story courtyard hotel in San Diego, which recently opened as the Clarion Suites. The 80,000-sq. ft. building contains 130 tworoom suites and required nearly a million board feet of western lumber.

Story at a Glance

Opportunities for non-residential building sales. case histories of West Coast hotels built using western woods...153 million b.f. potential by 1990.

Swets also chose wood as his building material because of its lower cost and design versatility. "There was good availability of materials, and wood works well in the exterior stucco applications. . and in the arches and balcony treatments," Swets said. In addition to structural and design flexibility, wood framing also provided excellent sound control and fire wall needs.

As demonstrated in these projects, western lumber's advantages in design, in construction and on the bottom line will continue to ensure its competitiveness as developers consider future hotel projects.