Model rooms give sneak peeks of Boise, Ketchum hotels under construction

The Inn at 500 Capitol boutique hotel isn’t set to open until Dec. 31 in downtown Boise, but a king room will be on full display in the Capitol Gateway building in BoDo by early March.

Obie Development Partners leased 2,770 square feet in early January across Capitol Boulevard from Trader Joe’s to build a fully furnished model guest room. It will represent  about half the rooms in the 110-room Inn at 500 Capitol that is under construction at Capitol and Myrtle Street.

The Limelight Hotel also provides a mock-up of a room to preview the 111-room hotel it is building in Ketchum.

The Inn at 500 space will also serve as a pre-opening office for three or four sales staff, and there will be a conference room where Inn staff can host visitors that want to tour the room.

“We can bring down potential travel planners for big companies to let them see what the rooms will look like,” Inn at 500 Capitol General Manager Aaron Black said.

The model or mock-up room will feature two of the signature features that developer Brian Obie built into his first boutique hotel, Inn at the 5^th, in Eugene, Ore., where he is a former mayor. Each room will have a “butler closet,” where room service can make deliveries from the hallway without opening the room door.

About half the rooms will have the bed placed at an angle, which will allow for a triangular niche to be built into the corner behind the bed. Local art will be displayed in these niches, Black said.

“Brian is working on a nook theme for Boise,” Black said.

The mock-up room will have a simulated balcony with a local image on the wall a few feet beyond.

Inn at 500 hotel construction started in mid-October and has progressed to the second deck of the five-story structure.

Negotiations are underway with a local restaurateur for the hotel restaurant, but Black did not name this person.

“It’s someone your readers would be familiar with, absolutely,” Black said.

In Ketchum, the Limelight Hotel Ketchum built a two-queen room into a commercial building at 171 E. Second Street, across from the Magic Lantern Cinema. The model room opened in January with the downtown Limelight expected to welcome guests in early December, General Manager John Curnow said.

“It’s an adventurer’s base camp,” Curnow said.

The room gives a sense of the outdoors with a padded bench attached to the dresser and a table that gives the appearance  of a breakfast picnic nook.

The model reflects 38 of the deluxe rooms in the five-story, 99-room Limelight. The fourth and fifth floors will have 14 residential units with two, three, four and five bedrooms, Curnow said.

The Limelight will be the largest hotel in Ketchum ,and the first located downtown rather than at the ski resorts.

“There’s a lot of interest in the community,” Curnow said. “This is the first hotel built (in central Ketchum) in quite a while.”

The Limelight is the first hotel built in Ketchum since 1993 when the Best Western Kentwood, currently the city’s largest hotel with 57 rooms, opened, said Arlene Schieven, president of Visit Sun Valley, the region’s tourism marketing organization.