Courtesy Queensbury Hotel (2021)
A flier explains the plan for the hotel in downtown Glens Falls, at the corner of Ridge and Maple streets.
The Queensbury Hotel has started a $3.9-million expansion that will add 5,200 square feet of banquet space to the historic Glens Falls property.
The plan will expand the Adirondack Room, which, along with the indoor pool, was an addition in the late 1970s by former owner, Kamyr, Inc., hotel general manager Tyler Herrick told FoothillsBusinessDaily.com, Tuesday. The room will grow from 2,300 to 5,500 square feet.
“We’re adding a dedicated banquet kitchen,” he said. “As we have turned this old lady around, the existing kitchen has been taxed. Now, we’ll have a separate kitchen just for banquets and events, and the existing kitchen will be retooled."
The new space is designed to be split into three separate rooms and will accommodate weddings of 350 people and trade shows and conventions for up to 700 people, he said.
The expansion continues the re-emergence of the Queensbury, which Ed Moore bought in March 2016. At that time, the hotel employed 30 people. Moore spent $4 million renovating all 123 rooms while upgrading the lobby and adding new lighting and bathrooms. Eighty employees now support guests and 100 will work there after the expansion is complete next summer, Herrick said.
The demand is there.
The hotel had 395 events in 2015 before the takeover and held 900 in 2019, before the pandemic, he said, adding they turned away about $700,000 in business that year.
Since announcing the expansion, they have rebooked the New York State Police Chiefs convention for July 2022. They have five or six weddings next year. The expansion will allow the hotel to host mid-week conventions that are popular with state associations that require larger spaces, he said.
Work on the electrical system has already started and framing for the space will be done by the start of 2022.
“We’re trying to get ahead of the game,” Herrick said.
While work is being done, the hotel will not be able to use the Adirondack, Warren, Saratoga and Washington Rooms, but they will be able to use two new meeting spaces on the second floor that are being renovated by Art Belden.
Glens Falls National Bank and Trust Co. is financing the expansion.
Herrick said Spruce Hospitality, the parent company of the hotel and of Moore’s Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott in Queensbury, has applied for a $105,000 sales tax exemption and a $44,000 mortgage tax exemption from the Glens Falls Industrial Development Agency. The IDA is scheduled to meet Thursday morning, Sept. 28, at 8 a.m. via Zoom to vote on the tax exemptions, he said.
Contractor for the expansion is V&H Construction of Moreau. Phinney Design Group of Saratoga Springs designed the new space.
The hotel continues to plan for a rooftop bar or meeting space, Herrick said, though that is down the road a few years and still needs to get over several hurdles.
“We’re excited,” he said. “Humans want to be together. We want to interact with each other. We have not seen a slowdown in business, and we’re very fortunate to regain the momentum we had pre-pandemic.”
Correction: We first listed Oliver Laakso as the 1970s owner of the Hotel who made expansions. It was the Kamyr company, and the story has been changed. We apologize for the error.