LIVING HERE
More than one hundred staff members of Grand Geneva Resort & Spa now have a place to call home.
The three-story building on Sheridan Springs Road, across from the employee entrance to the resort, will provide housing for up to one year for employees of Grand Geneva and Timber Ridge. The Commons at Grand Geneva can accommodate up to 172 employees in 4-bedroom units. Each unit comes with its own living space, including a kitchen, living room, and bathroom. In addition, the building provides a shared community room featuring a large kitchen, community table, lounge area with multiple televisions and game tables, plus a laundry area, fitness studio, outdoor patio area with grills, and a general recreation area.
This is a huge benefit for employees as affordable housing in and around Lake Geneva can be difficult to find. As a result, Grand Geneva began offering more on-site housing for employees, particularly seasonal workers or those employed on temporary work visas from other countries. The concept of resort campus employee housing is not new to the Grand Geneva property, however. When Hugh Hefner first built the resort as the first Playboy Club-Hotel in 1968, the campus contained an employee housing facility known as the “Bunny Dorm,” where many of the female employees hired as Playboy Bunnies lived under the supervision of “Bunny Mother” Gail Frantz. Grand Geneva remains committed to its employees by supplying temporary housing for those in need.
The Geneva Shore Report is not sold on whether this will be a good thing or a bad thing for Lake Geneva (and surrounding areas) because of student work visa inflow into the area. The hotel gains access to a huge number of workers for summer work, and those workers get paid about $15 an hour, like other entry employees. However, with free room and board, any competition that might exist is gone. Will those rooms be free for the employees? How many will be foreign work visa positions? Will this cost the Lake Geneva area potential employees’ competitive positions? Will these rooms to available for local as well as foreign workers? There are a lot of unknowns here and the GSR has to investigate further.
