Aug. 10--General managers of hotels don't normally do housekeeping, but it hasn't been a normal couple of weeks for Robyn Fuller. 

She runs Chattanooga's 200-room Clarion Hotel, which reopens today after having been closed since July 30 because of an electrical fire. 

"I've scrubbed walls, vacuumed and helped clean out freezers -- whatever it's taken," said Ms. Fuller, who added that several area hotels sent food to the Clarion's cleanup crew. "We've definitely established some camaraderie around here. We've actually got people saying they can't wait to get back to work." 

Ms. Fuller said 175 of the hotel's 200 guest rooms will reopen. The exceptions, she said, are the 25 rooms immediately above the lobby, which sustained substantial smoke damage. 

"We're going to have to dry-clean the drapes and bedspreads and clean the carpets in those rooms," she said. "We have to clean those air-conditioning units on that floor as well." 

Ms. Fuller estimated the fire and subsequent shutdown will wind up costing about $500,000. She said the hotel hopes to recoup at least some of that loss. 

"This has been very expensive, something I wouldn't wish on anybody," she said. "Equipment repair and replacement alone is about $100,000, and we had to relocate displaced business and turn down new business." 

The Clarion lost a six-day Shriner's convention that would have filled the hotel, but 150 to 200 stamp enthusiasts will check in as scheduled for the 80th annual convention of the Precancel Stamp Society. That event runs Tuesday through Saturday. 

"I was sweating bullets until Monday," said Jim Callis, the convention's general chairman. "You can't call 150 people two weeks ahead of time and say, 'Don't come.' " 

Mr. Callis said he'd been checking with the hotel periodically, but couldn't get through the day of the fire or the day after. He found out about the fire when he called Clarion's national reservation line, then managed to reach the Chattanooga hotel Wednesday, Aug. 1. 

"They told me they were 90 percent sure they'd be up and running for our convention," he said, "but they assured me they'd place us elsewhere if they weren't. They told me Monday afternoon they'd be open Friday (today)." 

Ms. Fuller said most of the individual guests booked for her hotel were relocated to the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. The Shriner's convention scheduled for the Clarion went to The Chattanoogan. Several Clarion banquet servers and housekeeping staff members helped out for several days at the new, city-owned hotel, but most of the Clarion's 100 employees wound up taking the hotel's down time off and getting paid 70 percent of their regular wages to do so. 

Mike Wilds, president of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Clarion's downtime was noticeable in the marketplace. 

"It did create some tightness," he said. "The Clarion has a good following. It's an important part of the market, of the offering in this community. Robyn and her staff do a good job, and we're very pleased they got back on line as quickly as they have." 

-----To see more of the Chattanooga Times/Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesfreepress.com 

(c) 2001, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.