SWaN & Legend Venture Partners (“SWaN”) invests in companies that are building engaging brands worthy of consumers’ passions in the fields of retail products and services; technology-enabled commerce and education; food, wellness and hospitality; and sports and entertainment.

The Main Hotel Building was burned down, rebuilt, burned down again, partially rebuilt and has fallen into disrepair. The current state of the building and the inadequate foundation require it to be completely rebuilt from the foundation up. The proposed Gensler design is based upon a dog-eared postcard showing the hotel, originally designed by Ernest C. S. Holmboe and Robert C. Lafferty, as rebuilt after its first fire in 1912. We believe this incarnation of the hotel’s Vernacular Shingle Style, as popularized by McKim, Mead & White, represents the grandest period of its physical history in that the second rebuilt structure did not include the full top floor.

Subject to hazardous materials remediation, the exposed portions of the octagonal turret and the southern and eastern walls of the building, which survived the 1919 fire intact, will be disassembled and reused in approximately the same building locations to create the same iconic appearance. Stones from nearby quarries, which match as closely as possible, will also be used in the reconstruction with stone masonry modeled after the original style.

In addition to the main hotel building, some highlights of the campus will include:

• six renovated historic Armory Houses that will be used as living history hotel suites, the José Andrés Cooking School and an art/photography school;
• the historical hotel Lodge building which will be rebuilt and repurposed with hotel rooms, as well as entertainment, discovery and learning spaces; and
• Yorks 8 Islands Outfitters, a functional sports and adventure activities outfitter celebrating Lewis & Clark’s bold Corps of Discovery, but named in memory of William Clark’s slave, York (1770 – c. 1832).