Bikes, lumber and big screens: A lounge at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront hotel, which was recently remodeled to attract a younger business crowd.

Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront is waking up from its slumber. The hotel, known for its easy-to-miss curved driveway coming off busy Front Avenue (as old timers call it) has been getting its groove back since a remodel that was completed in February.

General Manager Tim Pyne, who moved here three years ago from Florida, proudly gives a tour of the new rooms, with their sleek lines and their slick rusticism.

Whether it’s a coffee shop (like Blackstone in the Pearl) or a new office building, the current look for Portland commercial interiors is lots of wood, earth tones and quirky details, like small log slices dotted on the walls.

Rooms were remodeled last summer with murals of a large cross section of a tree that morphs into a bicycle wheel.

“The platform bed, the black and white contrast, the crisp look, that’s all for our brand. But then we pull in our purely Portland positioning…”

Shark week again

The millennial has now grown up enough to be a business traveler with an expense account, and the Marriott is going after them.

The classic business hotel room was a box with a bed for lying on while watching shark documentaries and a grim desk for writing. Pyne points out that the modern guest wants lots of electrical outlets. They like to move between differing work positions — the bed, the chase longue, the chair — in the way they might at the office. (You can rent bikes, and in Marriott Downtown Waterfront some rooms they’ve moved the closet to make room to hang a bike, but you can’t yet rent a dog.)

“That’s like my daughter, she doesn’t do her homework at the desk, she’s doing it everywhere,” he says of his 13 year-old.

“Millennials don’t like to unpack,” declares Pyne. For some reason they like to keep their wheelie bag out in the open, and dip in and out of it. For this reason the hotel has added more permanent looking bag stands than the usual folding chrome-and-webbing ones. “They like open closets too, so they don’t forget what they have hanging here,” he adds. So the closets have one sliding door instead of two.

Netflix and work

Getting rid of the armoire and having a 47-inch panel TV on the wall frees up some space. He’s excited about the Marriott entertainment system going live this December, which will allow guests to log into their own accounts, such as Netflix.

“We’re the first hotel company to offer that,” he says. Pyne also points out the walk-in shower and electric mirror in the 5′ x 7′ bathroom.

Pyne says Portland has gotten so low that there’s no slow season for Portland any more. They are low 80’s percent occupied in the low season (December and January.) Summer or peak rates are around $300-plus a night. In the slower seasons, rates range from $179 to $259.

The building is 36 years old and the architect was the City of Portland.

The interiors are by Paradigm Design of Houston, Texas. Marriotts are given some freedom to add a local touch to their design.

“I’ve been with the company for quite a few years, and in the old days you didn’t have that freedom. People visiting from Chicago want to get a taste of Portland and Oregon,” he says. He was transferred here from World Center, Orlando, Florida. What was the look at that Marriott? “It was really resort, a lot of palm trees and all that fund stuff.” It was a golf and spa place that fed off the local money tree, Disneyworld.

M people

Meanwhile, the Marriott Downtown Waterfront boasts other features that are becoming standard: free Wi-Fi, mobile check in, and an exclusive lounge. The M Lounge is open 24/7 and is designed, like an airport club lounge, to entice Marriott loyalists and regulars.

The M Lounge is for Gold and Platinum Elite award members, or to anyone with an extra $60 a day. It’s not open to the public. To be gold or platinum you have to stay 50 or 75 nights a year respectively in Marriotts. (There are 15 Ms across the USA.)

The business traveler comes to the M Lounge to relax and graze. Pyne points out the Starbucks automatic coffee maker, a one-push version of the coffee shop experience, and the Nutura filtered water machine that people use to fill tall glass bottles. There’s free cereal and muffins, constantly refreshed and all laid out like a startup workplace. There are a few beer taps and a Cruvinet wine dispenser, and a bartender shows up in the evening per OLCC rules. You can eat your snacks off a giant log slice table, at a high table reminiscent of a standing desk.

Rocking Tuesdays

The M Lounge is bright and open, although you are never far from a giant screen tuned to cable news, the ambient noise of business travel. It’s really a change of scenery from a guest room: one more place to perch your cup and your laptop, but with the added bonus of human company.

“Fridays are quiet but on a Tuesday you’ll have 25 people in here doing their work.”

There are 19 M Lounges now. Marriott is opening 50 more this year.

“It’s the next generation of the old concierge lounge, which used to be the top two or three rooms, offering continental breakfast and hors d’ouvres.” The concierge lounges were much smaller and had limited hours.

Pyne says the Waterfront Marriot’s bar, Bistro by Truss, has a friendly feel to it. Every day at five in the evening one of the staff tells a short story about some aspect of local history and then everyone does a Purely Portland toast.

Golden years

The days of tossing USA Today outside every room are long gone. The Marriott provides the PressReader, which offers 250 newspapers to choose in pay-per-view digital form.

“Our newspaper use is way down. And it’s greener.”

The other Marriott downtown was renovated about four years ago and does not have an M Lounge. “They don’t have all the whistles and bells we have, but it’s a very lovely rooms product,” he says.

The Waterfront Marriott markets itself to business travellers, leisure seekers, and Portland State University parents. The building has 38,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, which includes a remodeled ballroom.

Pyne knows these are golden times for Portland hotels. “The Portland market is doing very well, rates are up five years in a row, and our occupancy is growing faster than a competition and a lot of that is attributable to the renovation.”

jgallivan@pamplinmedia.com