Apr. 22, 2003 - Anchorage is getting a 90-room Howard Johnson Inn this summer. 

Last July, local general contractor Randy Kaer said, he arranged to buy a hotel that was once part of the mighty Holland America/Westmark chain. He turned the property at Third Avenue and A Street into the Yukon Vista Hotel as a temporary measure while seeking a national brand. 

His company, Kaercraft, then began gutting and revamping it in early winter for its most recent conversion, marked by Ho Jo's signature orange and blue. 

Yes, there will be a restaurant and bar. A pool will come after the opening in late May or early June. 

Kaer, 40, is yet another Alaskan who came for a few months and ended up staying a lifetime. Updating the old hotel is one in a string of construction and development ventures for the former Oregonian. 

The Howard Johnson chain caught his eye because parent company Cendant Hotel Group has been upgrading since taking over in 1990, Kaer said. Cendant spokesman Emanuel Naim said the brand has 476 hotels in 31 countries, and Kaer said he likes the strong international reservations system. 

In return for that system and advertising and franchise services such as marketing and management help, Kaer said, the Anchorage location will turn over 8.5 percent of gross room sales to Cendant. 

The site has been a hotel for decades. As a Travel Lodge it was the first piece of a chain that Bill Sheffield, later an Alaska governor, owned across Alaska and the Yukon. Sheffield sold his chain to Holland America, the tourism giant, in the 1980s. 

To spiff up the "value" property, Kaer said, he is adding amenities such as high-speed Internet service and bigger television screens than required by corporate headquarters. 

The midrange brand appealed to Kaer, he said, because it is in the bulge in the hotel-profitability bell curve. High-end and no-frills hotels get about the same return from a room, he said. Luxury hotel patrons pay a lot but expect costly service, while low-budget customers pay less and get less. 

"People don't want to stay in a cracker box," Kaer said, but they do not want to pay high room rates either. "They'd rather spend money out shopping." 

The hotel is one of a string of projects for Kaer since he came to Alaska 20 years ago. With one year as a business and economics major behind him, Kaer said he planned to work construction for the summer. His first day in town, he went for dinner at the How How Chinese Restaurant in Muldoon and met his wife-to-be, Susan, bartending. 

"When it came time to go back, I didn't go back," Kaer said. The next year he formed a construction company with his father, Kaer & Sons. He said he bid on every small tenant improvement job that came up, using a Macintosh computer in the back of a van to give on-site estimates. When his mother died, Kaer said, he took stock, slowed down and built a big house. 

Next, he said, he developed and built a Ramada Limited hotel in the parking lot of the restaurant where he met his wife, whose parents own the restaurant and now own the Ramada. Later ventures included a partnership with Kevin Tubbs in Yukon Spirits, a liquor store in University Center. 

Tubbs will manage the restaurant and bar required by the Howard Johnson franchise. He and Kaer said the hotel and the 130-seat eatery, The Yukon Yacht Club, will be separate venues. Kaer cites research he said he did to prep for the Ramada. Restaurants run by hotel staffers are losing propositions; restaurants with their own creative identity are a draw, he said. 

Susan Kaer will be the hotel's general manager. 

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(c) 2003, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. CCL, CD,