Main Street’s new Aspen Hotel opened as scheduled Monday, after a Saturday blessing by the Gideon’s Society and a last-minute push to mount headboards and other furniture.

Tony Latzel was the first guest. A Department of Transportation equipment operator from Yakutat here for two months on a chip-seal project, Latzel said he appreciated the room’s full-size refrigerator and its air-conditioner.

“At a lot of places in Alaska, air-conditioning is non-existent. It’s been warm,” Latzel said.

Latzel said he has stayed at other Aspen Hotels in the state on business and likes the company’s business model of not disturbing rooms of long-term guests. “It kind of feels at home.”

The hotel’s co-manager, Steve Smith, was busy Monday attending to last-minute touches.

“We’re still doing the last things,” he said, as a carpenter mounted a triptych photograph near the building’s Main Street entrance. “The first floor is 95 percent done.”

Only the hotel’s first floor – 20 of 50 rooms – were available early this week, but the remainder was to be available within days, he said. The hotel started accepting reservations online in April and still has about 10 rooms left for Saturday, June 20, when the Kluane-Chilkat International Bike Relay comes to town.

“We had some furniture come in Saturday afternoon – headboards, dressers, kitchen tables, nightstands. A lot of it had to be put together as well, so we worked until midnight Saturday and started back up 7 a.m. Sunday. It’s gone pretty smoothly after that,” Smith said.

Smith shares managing duties with his wife Cindy. They found the job online and moved here from similar jobs in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The hotel features large and small conference rooms, an exercise room with three machines, a laundry room and downtown’s fourth elevator. All rooms have WiFi as well as kitchenettes that include pots, pans and dishes.

The hotel is geared for longer visits but also open to nightly guests, Smith said. It’s the fifth Aspen in Alaska. Owner George Swift also has Lower 48 hotels in Vernal, Utah, Yakima, Wash. and Montana.

The hotel is decorated with photos on stretched canvas of local scenes, including Chilkat beaches and Pyramid Island at sunset and Lutak Inlet facing the ferry terminal and old sawmill site.

“In every Aspen we try to get local scenes. We don’t want to put up something that’s not part of the local environment,” said Brooke Davis, director of operations for Aspen Hotels.

(Co-manager Cindy Smith said she’s already heard several comments about the photos, including questions about who took them. That’s unclear, as the artworks are produced by a Washington-based graphics firm, she said.)

Davis said the hotel has five housekeeping and front-desk employees besides the Smiths.

“We’re going to see how business levels go (before making more hires),” Davis said. “We tend to market to extended-stay guests, so there’s not a daily cleaning of the whole room.

Co-manager Smith said she expects a grand opening event will be held, but it’s not yet scheduled. “We’re really happy to be here. Everybody’s been nice and welcoming. It’s a really nice community.”

The hotel’s driveway and parking lot will be paved when a paving machine is working in town, Steve Smith said.