The city announced that the purpose of the retreat is to discuss “council goals and priorities.”

The getaway will be an all-day affair this Saturday, Jan. 29th, from 8am to 4pm.

Cedarbrook was recently rated the #1 hotel in the US by the “TripAdvisor® 2011 Travelers’ Choice® Awards.” You can read more about that at our sister site The SeaTac Blog. This facility formerly housed a resort-like training center for Washington Mutual Bank.

Burien City Councilmembers invited to spend the day in luxury at Cedarbrook include:

(Seated, from left) Councilmember Gerald Robison, Mayor Joan McGilton, Councilmember Gordon Shaw; (standing) Councilmember Rose Clark, Deputy Mayor Brian Bennett, Counclmember Jack Block. Not pictured, Councilmember Lucy Krakowiak. Photo courtesy City of Burien.

According to the hotel’s website:

Thoughtfully located in Cedarbrook’s Copperleaf Bar is a regulation pool table, available for impromptu play any time. Whether solo or with a friend, spouse or significant other, it’s a noble (and fun) distraction!

No word yet on who’s bringing their own monogrammed pool cues, but we’re picturing a raucous round of B-Town billiards with cigars, snifters of fine Brandy and lots of cusswords as our local lawmakers argue over our city’s vision for 2011.

Architect's rendering of the proposed new Artemis Hotel, to be located in Des Moines. Click on image to see larger version.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story is from our sister site The Waterland Blog, which covers Des Moines:}

by Ralph Nichols

The lodging corridor serving Sea-Tac International Airport, which runs from SeaTac into Tukwila, will soon extend south into Des Moines.

Groundbreaking for the Artemis Hotel – a four-star hotel located at 22606 Pacific Highway S. in Des Moines – is expected sometime between mid-spring and early summer 2011.

Yareton Investment & Management LLC, a Washington real estate developer, is preparing to build “a distinctive boutique hotel” on 1.45 acres in the city’s Pacific Ridge commercial zone, according to its website.

The Artemis Hotel will be on the “highly competitive airport lodging corridor … where high-rated hotel chains are situated,” notes the Yareton website, which includes a first look at an architect’s rendering of the building exterior.

Belay Architecture of Tacoma is designing the “sophisticated eight-story mid-rise” hotel – now in the design-review stage – with 320 guestrooms, two full-service restaurants and a bar lounge, a banquet facility, and an outdoor swimming pool.

One restaurant is expected to serve authentic Chinese (not Chinese-American) cuisine.

The development site is four miles south of the airport and the southern terminus of the Link Light Rail route to Seattle, and just north of Kent-Des Moines Road where a state vehicle emissions testing station was located.

“There never was any doubt in my mind that this project would come to fruition,” Mayor Bob Sheckler told The Waterland Blog on Dec. 29.

“This is just one indicator that the city of Des Moines is on its way to economic recovery, and that our ties with foreign investors on both sides of the Pacific are beginning to pay dividends for those investors and our community alike.”

Sheckler played a pivotal role in bringing the Artemis Hotel – once planned for Tacoma – to Des Moines during a trip to China in November 2009.

While he went there to build foundations for a sister-city relationship with Changle, China, and an exchange program between Chinese community college students and Highline Community College, he came home with an agreement to build the multi-million-dollar hotel in Des Moines.

“I hope all the naysayers will be there for the groundbreaking,” Sheckler added.

The city’s 2011 budget includes permitting and development fees from the hotel project that spared three jobs from the chopping block.

Council members Dan Sherman and Scott Thomassen opposed including those fees, which will be received later in the year, in the budget and expressed doubts about whether the hotel actually would be built.

by Ralph Nichols

Although vacant commercial properties in downtown Burien are beginning to fill up with new and returning businesses, as we reported last week, a couple of big pieces still are missing.

None of the street-level retail space in the Town Square condominium complex at SW 152nd St. and 6th Ave. S. is occupied five months after the development opened, with no indication that any businesses are likely to move in anytime soon.

And a twice-anticipated hotel, which just a few years ago was expected to have welcomed its first guests long before now, still is just a dream.

So, despite all the encouraging news, what’s going on with these stalled commercial ventures?

According to Dick Loman, the city’s economic development manager, a combination of factors beyond the control of the city, Town Square private developer Urban Partners and other investors are at play.

But Loman is optimistic that these pieces will fall into place “hopefully sooner rather than later.”

With a number of hotels clustered in SeaTac and more in Tukwila, Burien, which is less than four miles from the airport terminal, seems like an ideal place for the next hotel development in this area, he said.

But while being first in a new location is seen as a marketing advantage for lots of businesses, the hotel industry – in which several properties often are located close together – considers “a pioneering effort” as having “a higher degree of risk,” Loman explained.

So Burien continues to wait for a hotel to come here. Still, there have been promising signs of interest.

In December 2005, Loman recalled, a Tacoma group signed a development agreement with Burien to build a hotel on the vacant city property at SW 150th St. and 2nd Ave. SW. Less than two years later, however, they ran into serious problems with a hotel already under construction in Lakewood and had to withdraw. The city released them from the contract.

A few months later, another group signed a letter of intent with the city to build a hotel at the same site. “But during the course of that process the financial markets began to drift,” he said. “They couldn’t proceed. There was too much risk.”

Despite these setbacks, Loman is optimistic. “I’m very confident that we’ll get a hotel here as soon as the market changes,” he said, noting several hotel chains have expressed interest in building in Burien in the future. “The demand is here. (A hotel) is needed. It will be a wonderful piece of our redevelopment.”

The wait to fill Town Square retail space may not last as long, but in the short term it’s a more complicated process. The primary problem is that leasing retail space in the complex involves working through the same maze with the construction loan that Urban Partners must navigate before condo units can qualify for financing.

“Urban Partners needs to talk to the bank, but they don’t know who (in the banking group) to talk to” right now, Loman continued. In the meantime, the developer tells him “yes,” businesses are interested in leasing this space. “But potential tenants want to know who (will hold the lease) before making a commitment.”

Although he has “no idea” how long it will take for Urban Partners to work things out with the banking group that now holds its construction loan, “I can’t imagine it will last more than 90 to 120 days. It’s too important an asset just to sit there.”