The hotel formerly known as the Pzazz has a new name and new look ahead of the anticipated addition of the Courts to the entertainment complex.
The completion of the more than $3 million renovation to what now is called the FunCity Resort Hotel was the facility’s first major upgrade in at least 12 years, according to Gary Hoyer, CEO of Great River Entertainment, which owns the facility along with two other hotels on-site, three more hotels in the Burlington area and Riverside Casino.
“This is an exciting day,” Hoyer said Tuesday during a ribbon cutting ceremony and tour that marked the completion of the renovation project. “We took the former Pzazz Hotel and we tore it to its core, right down to the studs and even replaced some of those.”
Ninety-seven rooms have been completed and equipped with new furniture in soft tones of grey, green and beige, as well as new light fixtures, plumbing, electrical and flooring.
“It needed a refresh, and rather than just kind of put lipstick on it, we decided to grind it down to the core and make it right,” Hoyer said.
Sierra McGee, executive head housekeeper, agreed.
“It needed botox — a lot of botox,” McGee said with a laugh as she peered out the window of a third-floor suite overlooking Huck’s Harbor, the entertainment center’s outdoor waterpark.
Work is underway on an additional 36 rooms that will follow the same design.
Once that work is complete, the hotel will have 12 less rooms as several have been expanded to accommodate larger families through a combination of queen beds and bunk beds, as well as additional living space.
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Ballocity, an indoor obstacle course and ball pit for younger children, and Ninja Extreme, an obstacle course for older children and young-at-heart adults, will be reinstalled by next fall, Hoyer said.
Visitors to the hotel also will notice a change to the swimming pool area, which will be absent the lazy river when it is reopened. Hoyer said that component of the swimming pool was seeing little use and thus will be replaced with a splash pad.
Work on the completed rooms began earlier this year and was slowed somewhat by supply chain issues. Hoyer said the hotel had secured materials for the project in terms of purchasing before cost of materials took off, but getting them was another matter.
“Delivery’s been really difficult,” Hoyer told The Hawk Eye in August, explaining getting hotel room doors, light fixtures, bedding and locks that work with computer chip slide keys were especially hard to nail down. “It’s a world-wide problem that I think started with COVID, so many factories shut down, and then I think staffing’s been an issue. There’s sort of a global shortage of foam to make chairs and mattresses with, and steel products are a challenge.”
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But the wait has paid off and the hotel now is ready to once again accommodate guests.
“It’s a signal about what we expect in Burlington and southeast Iowa in general,” Hoyer said of the remodel. “We’re committed to this community, we’re committed to this region, we want to bring more tourism, more sports tourism and more people to our community.”
Plans for the Courts near finalization
The Courts, a long-awaited indoor basketball court facility, first was conceived in 2011 after the Imagine Campaign received more than 1,800 ideas on how to improve the Burlington area.
Among those ideas was an indoor recreational complex. Over time, it was decided that it would be more cost-effective to erect the two components of the facility — soccer fields and basketball courts — in separate locations.
The indoor soccer field facility, known as the Turf, was completed in February 2019 by the RecPlex.
Andrew Ryerson, director of sports and facilities for the Greater Burlington Area Sports Facilities, said there were 21 weekends of events from late October 2020 through early April 2021 at the Turf, which brought in an estimated $2.8 million of economic impact to the Greater Burlington area.
“This was accomplished by teams from outside of the area choosing to participate in our tournaments, which were wonderfully operated by Perfect Game Softball, SESA Soccer, SCC Softball and The Burlington Mudd Dawgs Baseball/Softball organization, staying at the local hotels, eating at the local establishments and doing some shopping in the area,” Ryerson said.
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That season was short by three weekends of activity in November and December due to government-mandated COVID-19 shutdowns, so Ryerson anticipates the Turf’s financial impact this year will be greater.
Ryerson also noted that the $2.8 million does not include any events co-hosted by the Turf and the RecPlex, nor the money generated by local teams staying in the area rather than traveling to out-of-town tournaments, nor money generated by summer activity.
“If you choose to include the turnover ratio of the money from the direct impact being spent over and over again in the local area, that would increase the overall impact to an estimated $9.8 million,” Ryerson said.
He noted it is too early to determine the economic impact to the local economy that will be generated by the Courts, but he is optimistic.
“The project, which will be an expansion/addition at the FunCity Resort complex, will allow us the ability to host numerous types of indoor sporting activity, such as basketball, volleyball, badminton, pickleball, indoor tennis, dodgeball, futsal as well as many other types of indoor activity and events,” he said. “We are excited with the prospect of having a facility which can be available for year-round activity and which is also super conveniently located at a complex in which participants are a short indoor walk to their hotel room, to places to eat, to areas to hang out in-between games, to play at the FunCity Arcadium, bowl at KingPins or enjoy Huck’s Harbor Water Park.”
Ryerson believes the location of the Courts will be a selling point for tournaments due to its close and convenient proximity to lodging and entertainment amenities.
The Courts facility is expected to be constructed on the east side of the Pzazz Convention and Entertainment Center. An official announcement will additional details will be released in early January after additional details are finalized, Hoyer said.
