Spa shows signs of stress

Visitors are few these days at Carson Mineral Hot Springs Resort on the Wind River. (Photos by Kathie Durbin/The Columbian)

The golf course at Carson Mineral Hot Springs Resort has not opened this year, and the course has gone unmowed.

CARSON — The 18-hole golf course hasn't opened for business this year. The restaurant is shuttered; a sign on the door says, "Closed until further notice."

On a warm mid-week day in early June, no guests were registered at the resort. Though a handful of customers were soaking or getting massages at the vintage bath house, the large parking lot was nearly empty.

Carson Mineral Hot Springs Resort, established in 1901 and long revered by regulars as a rustic spa fed by natural mineral hot springs, appears to be on the ropes.

Five former resort employees have filed claims with the state Department of Labor and Industries for unpaid wages this year. In response, resort manager Geoff Lee has paid three claims; two others are pending.

Lee failed to respond to repeated requests for an interview. He was not at the resort when a reporter from The Columbian showed up unannounced.

County records show the resort is up to date on its property tax payments.

But the restaurant's liquor license expired Jan. 31, and specifics of the Labor and Industries claims indicate that the company is on shaky financial footing.

Lee told a state investigator in April that "since Oct. business has been bad. Closed Dec. and Jan. (Employer) asked workers to wait until things get back to normal. At this time, business still not good. (Employer) is hoping for some more investors to keep the business afloat."

Former employees say their paychecks were routinely late and routinely bounced.

Sasana Kostrikin, who worked the front desk at the resort from May to December 2008, said she came to dread payday.

"We would get the brunt of the hostility when people came in and said, 'Where is my check?'" she recalled. "Bill collectors would come in, vendors would come in, demanding to get paid. It was overwhelming."

Because their checks invariably bounced at Stevenson banks, many workers started going to the Wal-Mart store in Hood River, Ore. to cash them. But Wal-Mart eventually refused to honor the checks, Kostrikin said.

In January, Kostrikin filed a claim for $350 in unpaid wages. After she filed her claim, manager Geoff Lee finally paid her, she said.

Others reported similar problems. "Never paid on time," wrote Vickie R. Schuster, a former bath attendant, in her complaint. "Last check I got was 33 days late. Checks never cash — no banks in town will take the checks. Everyone gets paid late. Haven't been paid on time in over a year. They don't call me back or take my calls."

Schuster filed three separate claims and finally received $324 in back pay on April 23.

Sarah L. Mizar, a former spa attendant, wrote: "We would receive paychecks late. Then when we did get paychecks we had to drive an hour in town to cash it and there would be no funds. It took them 2 weeks to give me my last paycheck and there was still no funds."

Customer service appears to have slipped. One former employee said staff members had to spend their own money to buy toilet paper for resort restrooms. Faulty key cards occasionally locked clients out of their rooms. The front desk is not regularly staffed at night.

Jena Sawyer of Wilsonville, Ore., and three friends reserved a room at the resort on April 18. After baths and massages, they left for dinner. When they returned, the resort was roped off with yellow tape due to an apparent electrical fire. No managers were in sight.

"We had no idea whether it was safe to stay and there was not a soul in sight," Sawyer said. "We had no way of knowing if the place could blow up or what. A phone call to explain what was happening, whether it was safe to even get our stuff, or even a note on our door would have been helpful."

After repeated phone calls to Lee, Sawyer finally received a refund. But she never got an apology.

"I am very upset with the lack of service and will not be back," she said.

In 1995, when South Korean Gap Do Park and others bought the historic resort on the Wind River, they acquired a 1901 hotel, a 1917 bathhouse, a small golf course and land for future development — 280 acres in all.

The Korean investors planned to build a new resort and conference center on the site and redevelop the golf course. Their plan did not include preserving or restoring the old buildings.

Problems soon materialized. In 2002, state Labor and Industries officials shut down the rustic bathhouse briefly, concerned that the aging floors could give way under the weight of the filled cast-iron tubs. The company installed new support timbers.

At about the same time, state health inspectors identified problems with the resort's drinking water supply and on-site sewage treatment system. In July 2002, they posted warnings that those conditions were potentially hazardous to visitors and ordered them corrected.

Water from the baths was being discharged into the Wind River untreated. The state ordered the company to pump the resort's sewage and water from the bathhouse 250 feet up a bluff to a series of settling ponds on the golf course at a cost of $2 million.

In 2003, the owners broke ground on a 28-unit motel that replaced a row of rustic cabins in the woods. The following year, with that project still unfinished, they rushed to complete a more upscale 39-unit motel perched above the riverbank.

It was not the only resort under development in Skamania County. Eleven miles west, Bonneville Hot Springs Resort, with its posh spa amenities, opened for business in 2002 and has built a strong following. But Carson's project director, Terry Kim, said he wasn't worried about the competition, because no other resort has access to the Wind River's mineral hot springs, which bubble up near the bank at a temperature of 126 degrees.

Phase three of the resort master plan was to replace the bathhouse with a five-story, 35,000-square-foot spa at the south end of the property, complete with restaurant, fitness center, conference rooms and ground-level swimming pool.

About four years ago, the owners submitted a draft application for the spa building to the county planning department. Planners sent it back with a long list of questions.

The company never resubmitted the application.

Last summer, Kostrikin took reservations at the golf course to earn a little extra money.

"Business was shockingly poor," she said. "It would just trickle in. And they were trying to staff a full-service restaurant."

The consensus among resort employees was that the owners had bitten off more than they could chew, Kostrikin said.

"I tried personally during meetings to find out what was going on," she said. "I would never get a straight answer."

This summer the golf course hasn't opened, and in mid-June it appeared it had not been mowed this year. Its future — like that of the rest of the resort — remains unclear.