Mount Rainier’s Paradise Inn reopens after $25M renovation

The 79-room annex at Mount Rainier National Park’s Paradise Inn has reopened after a $25 million renovation.

The News Tribune reports that the annex reopened Friday after a 19-month closure. The building is almost a century old and accounts for more than half of the hotel rooms in the park.

The mountain wasn’t out for the celebration to mark the occasion, but the park’s operations manager, Melinda Simpson, said that didn’t matter because it was “sunny inside.”

Simpson said she’s excited that the floors no longer creak and that the windows all open and have screens that stay put. The renovations brought the building up to seismic code, fixed where the foundation had sunk, installed new fire safety systems and included electrical and plumbing upgrades. The last time the electrical system was updated was during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s.