A Spokane construction company and two Coeur d’Alene design concerns are teaming up on a major renovation project at the Best Western University Inn, in Moscow, Idaho.

The project will include renovating all 173 guest rooms, reconfiguring restaurant and meeting spaces, and installing new furniture and fixtures, says Cory Trapp, a principal at Longwell+Trapp Architects PLLC, of Hayden.

Longwell+Trapp and Coeur d’Alene architect Rann Haight designed the project, and T.W. Clark Construction LLC, of Spokane, is the contractor on it.

The project also will include the addition of two elevators, Trapp says. The two-story hotel was built in 1978 without elevators.

Trapp declines to disclose the project cost, but says it’s the largest renovation project at the hotel in at least 20 years.

The University Inn is located at 1516 Pullman Road, just east of the Palouse Mall shopping center, on land the hotel leases from the nearby University of Idaho, about 85 miles southeast of Spokane. 

The hotel will consolidate its three restaurants into the Seasons Restaurant, to make way to increase meeting space in areas now occupied by the hotel’s Pantry and Broiler restaurants, Trapp says.

The project will convert 3,000 square feet of restaurant space into meeting space, bringing the hotel’s total meeting space up to 15,000 square feet.

A portion of the current Broiler restaurant area will be used as a complimentary-breakfast area for hotel guests.

Seasons Restaurant also will overlook newly landscaped grounds at the hotel, says Jerry Jaeger, president of Hagadone Hospitality Co. of Coeur d’Alene, which co-owns the hotel in a joint venture with Magnuson Management LLC, also of Coeur d’Alene.

The courtyard at the hotel also will be renovated, Jaeger says.

 “The entire facility will be brand new inside,” he says, adding that the exterior façade also will be modernized with a new design.

Bill Sayler, general manager of the hotel, says, “The renovation will enable us to host many new and larger meetings and conferences.”

The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of July, prior to the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year at the University of Idaho, and at Washington State University, which is in the neighboring town of Pullman, Wash.

Jaeger and Coeur d’Alene business magnate Duane Hagadone co-founded Hagadone Hospitality in 1985. The company also owns and operates The Coeur d’Alene Resort, and the Best Western Plus Coeur d’Alene Inn, both located in the Lake City.  Hagadone Hospitality also manages the Best Western Plus Kootenai River Inn Casino & Spa, which the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho co-owns, in Bonners Ferry.

Magnuson Management is owned and operated by relatives of the late Harry F. Magnuson, a prominent Wallace, Idaho, businessman.