Icicle Village Resort Celebrates 30th anniversary

Icicle Village Resort recently celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with a free open to the public event on August 6. The celebration featured complimentary ice cream and bratwurst, entertainment from local music performers, and a free raffle for free stays and other prizes. Paul Jinneman, one of the founders of Icicle Village Resort, said the business is doing great.

“I feel it’s doing great. The hotel does well, and we have a great group of condominium owners also.  We have a fantastic team of people  One long time employee; Miguel Gonzalez has been with us since day one, and he still works there,” Jinneman said.

The number one thing that IVR has tried to do over the years is treat their employees well, Jinneman said. The resort offers healthcare, tuition reimbursement, retirement benefits and other benefits to employees. The goal is to build a team that is a family and wants then to stick around for a long time, Jinneman said.

Karl Ruether, founder of Icicle Resort retired in 2019, also said that treating employees with respect is important. “They are more than employees, they become friends,” Ruether said.

Gonzalez was a day-one employee, and his wife Maria and brother Manuel are still working for the resort as well, Ruether said. He said that the resort has provided employment for over 100 people and that throughout the years, many groups come back year after year, for over twenty-five years, to stay at the resort. He said that is not common in the hospitality business for people to visit the same resort year after year. Ruether said that the anniversary [event] was exciting. Ruether said. “I am really proud of what we built here. It was a struggle early on to come to town. [It was] a lot of hard work and there was a lot of community involvement… I think the community embraced what we were doing. And we are grateful the way the community responded to us. We appreciate everybody’s support over the past thirty years.”

Icicle Resort is known for its accommodations throughout the state, Ruether said. He thinks that the hotel and condos have a good future considering all the blood, sweat and tears that has been put into maintaining this business the past thirty years. For the first few years, Ruether said he practically lived at the business.

One of the most difficult parts of the past thirty years was the pandemic, Ruether said.

“I retired at the end of 2019. But I can tell you it was hard having to lay off most of the employees and shutting down everything,” Ruether said. “It was one of the hardest things we had to do.” All the employees who wanted to come back after the pandemic shutdown have been able to, he said. Jinneman said that running the resort has been a fantastic experience and interacting with our team members. We have made quite a few changes over the years. And it was very interesting trying to figure out what would work best for the resort,” he said.

Over the past 30 years, Icicle Resort has transformed a simple 66-room Best Western into a full-service resort, according to provided material. In the past ten years, 15 additional rooms with fireplaces, the Alpine Spa and 8 three-bedroom condos have been added.

Through a combination of dreams, hard work and perseverance that was rooted in a value system of the Golden Rule, doing unto others as you would have them done unto you, the resort has created a thriving hospitality environment. Also, the original investors/owners Dick Beselin, and Vern Thoreson  along with their spouses Sue and Mary came from Edmonds to attend the 30^th Anniversary celebration. Icicle Resort current General Manager is Matt Skalesky of Columbia Hospitality who also greeted the guests at the event.