Cottages Add To Waitsburg Lodging

WAITSBURG - The Walla Walla area is growing in popularity as a wine destination, and some weekends, travelers can't find a place to stay in town.

With the price of gas going up and the value of the Euro high, people in Seattle and Portland are choosing vacations closer to home over a tasty tour of wine regions overseas.

And finally, Waitsburg has a growing reputation as a wonderful small town to spend a weekend in the country, but accommodations here are still few and far between.

Wine critic Paul Gregutt and filmmaker Karen Stanton Gregutt are banking on all that and their own connections to make their new company, Waitsburg Cottages Llc, a success. "We'll have multiple cottages in town so visitors can experience Waitsburg in all its glory," Stanton Gregutt said. "We tell people they'll be staying in a safe, small, farm community where they should expect to hear people mow their lawns and see kids walking to school. They're choosing the authenticity of a place like Waitsburg."

Waitsburg Cottages, which Stanton Gregutt said will add a number of new guest houses in the next five years, will help the town's lodging crunch. Together with Pam Conover's PJs Cottages, Marcie Perkins' Hiromi's House and Nothing New Lodging, the other accommodations now in the works include Marilyn and Robbie Johnson's apartment above the Plaza theater and the new boutique hotel next to the Main Street post office.

The Gregutts recently opened their first "cottage," modeled in part after their own remodeled home written up in Seattle Times' Pacifi c Magazine in late 2009.

Named "Three Maples Cottage" for the three giant maples on the grounds, the first of the Waitsburg Cottages is right across the street from the 1,000-square-foot country cabana where they live themselves.

"It's another wing of our house," Stanton Gregutt said. "It expands our home in Waitsburg so we can share it with people - friends or potential new friends."

Still waiting for warmer weather to get a coat of paint on its exterior, Three Maples Cottage is just about done on the inside, where the 1,100-square-foot floor plan features two queen-bed suites with private bathrooms (one has a claw foot tub that came out of the Fender Building on Main Street), a well-equipped open kitchen with a dining area for entertaining and French doors leading to the garden, which Stanton Gregutt predicts "will be a show piece by the time I'm done with it."

Guests will be treated to a complementary bottle of wine, and after that, consumption from the wine rack will be an intriguing vintage exchange where guests are asked to replace what they drink with a choice of equal or greater value.

The Gregutts will develop walking tours of town that include stops on Main Street, the mill site, the Bruce Mansion, the cemeteries, the brewery and so on. The fridge will be stocked with baby carrots for Izzy the camel.

While the whole house will have wifi, the living room will have cable television and a DVD player. The bedrooms are appointed with romantic beds and fine linens. The comfort and presentation will be in keeping with standards set by some of the existing cottages in town, particularly Perkins' Hiromi's House, Stanton Gregutt said.

"We credit Marci with really setting a standard that impressed us," she said. "It inspired us."

The Gregutts said they will let the rates depend on occupancy and season.

The couple bought the property three years ago and first remodeled the 600-square-foot home that was and continues to be the home of Dorothy Lambert who now rents from the Gregutts.

Then in December, they began the remodel of the main house in earnest. Built in 1910, the structure needed everything but a new roof.

"It's a new house, top to bottom," Gregutt said.

For more information about Waitsburg Cottages, contact info@waitsburgcottages.com.