This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When the White House announced that President Barack Obama was headed to Utah, the speculation on where he would stay centered on either The Grand America Hotel, the most lavish in Salt Lake City, or a posh location in Park City.

Nobody guessed the Sheraton on 500 South, a nice, albeit pedestrian hotel. When the dump trucks and buses started lining up to secure the building, there was quite the social media response. Here's a sample:

@LJoyce11 wrote, "Pretty freaking cool that President Obama is here. But I have one thing that's bothering me, the Sheraton ... really?? Not the Grand??"

And @RyBen3 said, "The fact Obama is staying at the Sheraton and not the Grand America is both ironic and accurate in how he is supported in the state of Utah."

True, Utah is very conservative, very Republican, but politics had nothing to do with his accommodations.

While most people might expect the president to stay in fancy rooms wherever he goes, that's not always the case. He bunked at the Holiday Inn when he visited Kansas in January.

Where the president stays often has to do with three main factors: security, location and availability.

The Grand America, built in the lead-up to the 2002 Winter Olympics, was made with events like this in mind. There would be no need to back up dump trucks to secure the building, which already has a few floors of meeting space that act as a buffer for the hotel tower. And just a couple of blocks away from the Sheraton, it would be hard to argue that location was the deciding factor.

"One guess is the availability of rooms at the last minute," said Peter Watkins, a former White House aide from Utah who accompanied former President George W. Bush on three visits here. "The White House didn't announce this trip until Monday."

And that means it might have been planned quickly. Also, Obama came just days before the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors to Salt Lake City, likely reducing options.

When the president travels, he doesn't need just one hotel room, he requires multiple floors. The entourage includes not just aides and travel staff, but also the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency, which essentially creates safe rooms for the commander in chief to talk securely to military leaders if the need arises. Then there are the reporters traveling with him.

The Sheraton had the space. One rumor is that the hotel was picked because it is staffed by members of a union. But that's not true. While the president does favor union hotels, Utah, a right-to-work state, doesn't have any.

Grand America declined to comment. And the White House would say only that the hotel fit the "security and logistical needs for presidential travel."

Jason Ford, general manager of the Sheraton Salt Lake City, doesn't know why the White House picked his hotel, but he doesn't think it is as weird as some Utahns seem to.

"I wasn't surprised," said Ford, who is obviously proud of the establishment now undergoing a renovation. "For us, it was truly an honor."

The hotel has a presidential suite, but he wouldn't say whether the president stayed there, because that would violate the privacy of a guest. Ford would say that the hotel staff received "pretty last minute" notice and they didn't go to any great lengths to spruce up the rooms used. The White House did, in fact, book multiple floors of the nine-story hotel, with the press located on the fifth. Rooms at the Sheraton go from $150 to $295, though the White House entourage likely got a government rate.

Other guests had to go through a series of security checkpoints to get into the hotel and at times had to take the stairs. The Secret Service controlled the elevators during the president's meetings with LDS Church leaders and local elected leaders.

Matt Stevens, a Columbia Records employee who lives in San Francisco, was in the lobby when Obama arrived Thursday night. He said those in attendance cheered when the president entered and Obama took the time to shake everyone's hands, including his, before the president walked up the curving staircase next to the deer-antler chandelier.

Sandy Savas works in the Hairmasters beauty salon, near the hotel's small exercise room. She had three clients around 7 a.m. Friday when she saw a group of Secret Service agents run down the hall. She hurried to the door and saw the president on his way to his morning workout. She waved and he waved back. She tried to walk out of the salon, but an agent blocked her way and closed the door. Obama noticed, stopped what he was doing, walked over, opened the door and shook Savas' hand and those of the three women waiting to get their hair done.

"We all just couldn't believe it," Savas said. "We were just all acting like a bunch of teenagers. I was very impressed."

Obama checked out of the hotel shortly after 9 a.m., and his motorcade sped off toward Hill Air Force Base, where he gave a seven-minute speech on alternative energy and then departed for Washington. Almost instantly upon Obama's exit from the hotel, the buses blocking the building were removed and the Secret Service packed up and left.

A few guests milled around the lobby, including Stevens.

He marveled at how the hotel went from being quiet when he arrived Tuesday to being inundated with security for the president's visit and now was back to normal.

"It was a lot of excitement that I was not expecting," he said as he closed up his laptop, threw away his coffee and headed out for a business meeting.

Twitter: @mattcanham

Tribune reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this article