Not all storms come to disrupt your life; some come to clear your path.

After the storm

In late October 2017, a few weeks after the perfect storm, because I was overwhelmed to say the least, Mark’s mom, sister, and brother-in-law came to visit to see the storm damage. Even though they hadn’t seen the hotel before the storm (and half of it was now gone) they still loved it. Having them visit after this upending situation truly helped keep me sane.

For days, they helped around the hotel. We kept my brother-in-law busy chain-sawing fallen trees that had obstructed hiking paths. My handy sister-in-law helped me pick out new fabric for chairs and headboards that needed to be redone, and we identified other easy cosmetic changes that would spruce up the place, like replacing pool umbrellas and other worn decorative pillows.

Our brother-in-law chain-sawing some of the storm’s damage to make the path clear! © Marlo Leaman October 2017

My mother-in-law was enamored by the tropical flowers in Costa Rica. She filled vases of flowers and put them around the common areas of the hotel and in guest rooms and showed the concierges how to do the same. The staff told us that Gomer didn’t like flowers (not surprising!), so they hadn’t done this before. We continued this fresh flower tradition in guest rooms the whole time we owned the hotel.

Although we kept Mark’s family busy during the days, we let them ‘be guests’ at night, enjoying happy hour cocktails made by Vianney, and delicious 4 course meals created by our amazing chefs. 

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In the short time we had owned the hotel, we had already started fixing some things that we didn’t like. We built a new parking lot, replanted gardens, and repaired and expanded decks. Our 2-bedroom villa had a very strange ‘amenity’ - an outdoor shower that looked like a wishing well. We didn’t think that was a very attractive or marketable feature, so we decided to tear it out and build a beautiful in-ground stone hot tub so that unit would have an exciting feature.

The previous wishing well (lt) and the new replacement stone hot tub (rt) © Marlo Leaman

For bigger projects, Mark and I planned to update those things slowly as we had the time and money for. We had already developed a wish-list of things we didn’t like but could live with like redoing the pool and replacing the dining room roof.

That was before the storm disrupted that plan and changed our whole trajectory.

Losing half of our guest units meant that our business wasn’t financially sustainable, so we knew we had to build new units-and do it now. This was not something we could do slowly.

Then there was the problem of what to do with guests! Any construction is disruptive and messy, but constructing a hotel while guests are present is especially difficult. We knew that people traveling to a luxury, adults-only boutique hotel in the middle of a pristine rainforest would not tolerate construction noise and mess. Any negative reviews would certainly be a business killer!

Then we realized what we had to do. We knew we had to bite the bullet and plan for a complete hotel shutdown-no guests-for the duration of the rebuild. The shutdown would allow us to add new guest units and tackle our wish-list all at once in one big project. Unfortunately, we knew that also meant foregoing months of revenue. This did not bode well for our year 2 finances, and we knew that our second year would be another financial wipe-out, but we really had no choice.

It wasn’t until later that we realized that the storm was a blessing in disguise. It gave us the insurance proceeds and the motivation to undertake a huge construction project that would totally transform the hotel. It was painful as hell, but it was the right thing to do, and the storm cleared the path for us do it.

The Process

But, now where to begin? After the disasters we faced from Gomer cutting so many corners, we knew that we needed to do everything the right way. Was that even in question? To not do everything right? No. That’s not how we operate. We had remodeled previous homes and even designed and built a custom home in the U.S. This project would be built like it was our own home – because it was!

The first step was to find an architect, but where do you start looking for an architect in a small, remote town in Costa Rica? And only being in Costa Rica about 12 weeks, we hardly knew anyone.

I had seen some houses in a Costa Rican local home magazine that I liked. I wrote down names of builders from those homes and researched some Costa Rican architects. Many of the architectural firms we liked were in San Jose-3 hours away, and after emailing and detailing our project, they wouldn’t take on ‘such a small job’. Small? It didn’t feel small! It basically was going to be a complete rebuild. They were looking for multi-million-dollar commercial projects, and our project wasn’t big enough for them.

AJ, our former manager, knew a few people, including the architect who had designed and built 2 of the most recent units at the hotel. We interviewed her, but I was very leery of anyone who had worked and dealt with Gomer before. Red flag! That was a nope.

AJ introduced us to a few other builders in town who had also designed homes. We interviewed a few of them, but no one was clicking with us. We needed someone who could take the existing feel of the hotel, but integrate an updated, modern version.

Then we found him.

There was an article about a local architect in another magazine that showed a few of his home designs. We liked everything that we saw. Cordero was a Costa Rican architect living in our town, and he spoke English. We interviewed him, he drove us around to homes he had built and that were under construction. He had vision and style. He hadn’t taken on a big commercial project like ours before, but he was willing to give it a go.

He came to the hotel to look around, and we talked ideas. We had a beautiful view of the ocean, but the design of the existing common areas didn’t take full advantage of the ocean view and totally ignored the surrounding jungle/forest/trees. Mark wanted to capitalize as much as possible on all the views, and he and Cordero came up with a plan to have almost 270 degree views while standing in the common area. That would require a building with no walls, as few columns as possible holding up the roof, and a higher roof.

We all agreed the footprint of the existing building would stay the same to minimize cost and disruption of the terrain, and we all agreed that the pool had to be incredible. Another goal was to make the common areas more level. Due to the mountainous terrain and Gomer’s poor designs, the common areas were filled with steps. Everywhere you went required going up and down steps. One step up here, three steps down there, two more steps up again, etc. All the steps were dangerous and inconvenient, so we asked Cordero to put everything on the same level.

And of course, we needed to build a few more units to make up for the lost inventory. Fortunately, the units that were destroyed by the storm, were the oldest, smallest, and ugliest we had, so any replacement would be better than what we had lost. Silver lining!

Now that the rebuild wish list was ready, Cordero got to work on the design. We decided that ‘tropical modern’ would be the look. Cordero prepared a design and a preliminary budget.

We stressed how important it was to get all the work done without delay, as we needed to be ready to reopen the hotel for guests for the next high season. We planned to complete the design plans by March/April of 2018, receive all permits and approvals and start construction by mid-July, and be open again by Thanksgiving. That gave us about 5 months maximum for demolition and reconstruction. OF A HOTEL! How dumb is that? Why we thought that was possible I can’t explain. But Cordero agreed to get it done, and we somehow believed he could do it.

The Plan

We had guests coming mid-July for a small wedding. They had booked the entire hotel, so the plan was as soon as they departed, we would pack up and store everything and start the demolition that day! We blocked our reservation calendar from July 18^th to mid-November of 2018. Oh, one more thing. We were planning this construction for the Costa Rican rainy season! What could go wrong?!

We also had our team of about 15 people that we needed to keep employed (and paid!) so they’d stay with us through this. If we laid them off for 5 months, they would all have to take jobs with other employers, and we would have to start from scratch putting a team together. We did not want to do that! But we needed to keep 15 people busy for 5 months.

Since we were shutting down the hotel completely anyway, we decided this would be the best time to tackle smaller projects that were outside of the rebuild. The team could repaint villas, deep clean, and work in the gardens. Our 3-bedroom villa bathrooms were in desperate need of updating, so we planned to tackle that too.

The bathroom in need of updating! © Marlo Leaman

We also decided that if anyone wanted to take off during those months, that they could do that unpaid, and we’d guarantee their job back when we reopened. Every employee except one opted to stay with us and work on the small projects through the shutdown.

With all our plans now in place for the 5-month shutdown, it became more and more clear – that October storm didn’t just come to disrupt our previous plans. It had cleared the path for a better - much better - hotel!

Now, could we survive the construction??