With a schedule driven by the short tourism season in Southeastern Alaska, Reid Middleton served as the structural engineer for this four-story wood frame hotel addition which the project design was completed in less than two months. An open parking area is located under the western half of the structure. While many structures use a concrete transfer deck over parking, a structural steel solution was selected because of the high concrete prices in Ketchikan and the easy access to fabricated structural steel shipping from West Coast ports.

An innovative long-span steel beam allowed a nearly 70-foot column-free traffic circulation lane along the portion of the building closest to the original hotel. To avoid long fabrication times that are common with heavy sections, the long-span beam was built up from a single large beam and four smaller tube sections.