Amsterdam has the famous Jakarta Hotel with a tropical courtyard, Rotterdam will have the Chicago Hotel with a European garden and Nes on Ameland will soon have two hotels with a ‘dune garden’ with island nature.
This became clear on Thursday afternoon during a presentation of the plans for the replacement new construction of the Westcord Hotel Noordsee Ameland at the Hûs en Hiem health advisory committee in Leeuwarden.
Owner Harry Westers engaged the architect for the design, who also designed the new building for the adjacent, neglected site with the former swimming pool. Volker Wessels is building a hotel with 120 rooms here. Construction will start next year, said architect Wouter Thijssen. An equally large four-star hotel will be built on the site of Hotel Noordsee, with 106 rooms (the same number as now). “They will be hotels with lots of greenery, lots of wood and spatial architecture.”
It would be nice if both hotels on the Strandweg would have the same appearance, Westers told the committee. “That fits well on the island.” He said that Westcord will operate both properties (but replied in an explanation that this is still being negotiated). “We have been working on a plan for about twenty years, the strange thing is: there were no options. We then sold the site to Volker Wessels and from one day to the next it was suddenly possible. A strange history.”
He is now having his Westcord hotel architecturally connected to the future ‘neighbouring hotel’, by the Amsterdam office that also designed the multi-award winning Jakarta hotel, which opened five years ago. The hotel will remain the same height, but will consist almost entirely of wooden construction and will have a green roof with solar panels. Thijssen: “Very sustainable. Such a green roof with local grass species and plants is also extremely useful against heat stress. In the heart there will be a large atrium with greenery, just like in Amsterdam.”
‘Building gives island feeling’
Only greenery that is also found elsewhere on the island is used in and around the hotels. “We want the building to fit into nature as much as possible. Giving it a bit of an island feeling,” Westers said about Hotel Noordsee.
The members of Hûs and Hiem – (landscape) architects and urban planners – initially sounded quite critical. They find the plans “a very significant intervention” on the environment. The representative of the municipality of Ameland, who was unable to attend due to the storm, also requested attention through the secretary for the massiveness of the plans. “It is much and more of the same.” A disturbing element is an apartment complex that was once sold to private individuals as part of the hotel and will not be replaced.
However, the overtone ultimately turned out to be enthusiasm, just as before for Volker Wessels’ hotel. “This is a substantial improvement, absolutely. Fascinating to look at the plans,” said an architect. “Compliments for the ambition, also in the field of sustainability,” said another. “You already feel like booking, it’s recruiting,” said chairman Marc Visser.
That’s not the case yet. This was just a first round of advice. Parking also needs to be tinkered with. Furthermore, the meter-long whale that stands in front of the adjacent Nature Museum will be given a different place. Where is not yet clear and the relocation is separate from the hotel plans.