BHG Hotels LLC, the Wilsonville, Ore.-based company that owns the Holiday Inn Spokane Airport, at 1616 S. Windsor, plans to renovate the 80,000-square-foot hotel’s two meeting spaces, 122 guest rooms,  main lobby area, and its in-house restaurant, Pepper’s.

Mike Barnes, the hotel’s general manager, says the renovations are expected to cost $1.5 million. BHG plans to carry out the updates in several phases starting before this October, around the start of the hotel’s low season, he says.

“Ideally by the end of the year, we’ll be well under way, but right now, we don’t have specific dates,” Barnes says.

 The updates will start with improvements to guest rooms, then the lobby, followed by the conference rooms and the restaurant. Renovations are expected to be complete by spring 2015, Barnes says.

InterContinental Hotel Group, the franchisor for the Holiday Inn & Resorts brand, currently is taking bids for architects and contractors for the project. Hurtado|Hissong Design Group will be the interior designer on the project.

The updates aren’t expected to interfere substantially with the hotel’s operation, says Connie Dullanty, the hotel’s sales manager.

“We’ll wait for big renovations until the low season,” she says. “It really shouldn’t affect overall meeting space.”

The renovations were part of the InterContinental Hotel Group’s stipulations for BHG when that company bought the hotel in May 2013.

The Holiday Inn Spokane Airport has available for rent a board room that seats up to 10 people and a larger conference room that seats 104 as a banquet hall. The larger conference space divides into two smaller classrooms, each with a maximum capacity of 45 people, Dullanty says. 

Including the restaurant staff at Pepper’s, the Holiday Inn employs 30 full-time and 15 part-time workers.