What is it about hotels?
Everyone stays in them at some time, so they’re no big mystery – a building with rooms for rent by the night, a restaurant, a bar and staff who can direct travellers where they want to go.
Hotels, nonetheless, have cachet. It might be the floating population, having fun on vacation or doing deals on business travel.
It might be the out-of-the-office feeling when discussions are held over lunch or an after-work drink. If you observe business closely, it might be the way skilled staffs and managers make all those reservations, rooms, meals, drinks, bands and directions simply occur.
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| Shannon Oatway photo, Business Edge |
| Blues fan Gerry Garvey leases the King Edward Hotel in Calgary, and is hoping to save the historic building for future generations. |
Some famous hotels become building blocks in the public images of their cities – you can’t say Macdonald without thinking Edmonton, or Algonquin without thinking of the New York literary scene of the Twenties. A book and movie were once named Hotel and we all knew they would be exciting because they were set in a grand hotel.
Other hotels also achieve the status of institutions with special meaning. (Hard to imagine hotels as stuffy enough to be institutions, though.)
Calgary’s legendary but aging King Edward Hotel hit a six-month delay in plans to buy it and renovate it to add more affordable rooms to the inner-city housing supply.
The city is also planning to study the possibility of building an underpass beneath the nearby CPR tracks to link 9th Avenue S.E. to Victoria Park.
Gerry Garvey, who leases the hotel, sounded upbeat and hopeful in a recent interview. Garvey, a commercial mortgage broker and blues fan, says heating the King Eddy is expensive. It’s almost 100 years old and there’s no insulation.
“I was going to shut it down but we’re going to hang in there,” he said. “Even with natural gas prices going up, we think we can hang on.”
And, he adds, “it’s the most famous blues bar in Canada,” as well as providing affordable housing in the East Village.
“We are quite confident that we’ll pass all the tests,” Garvey said in reference to five city studies of the area. “We think we can fit with the underpass.”
He compared the King Eddy’s location to that of the historic Calgary Grain Exchange building, which is located next to a railway underpass at 1st Street and 9th Avenue S.W.
Garvey said the hotel would cost $650,000 to buy and another $4 million to expand to 85 barrier-free rooms with an elevator and a restaurant on the main floor for the residents of the East Village. Two floors, or 30 rooms, and the blues bar are currently operating.
Tenants could include single workers or people who can’t afford a damage deposit but can afford $375 a month rent, he said.
Meanwhile, a longtime landmark hotel on the north side is likely to come down this spring after the city approved a land-use change for its site.
Formerly called The Highlander, the hotel at 1818 16 Ave. N.W. is finishing its life as the Days Inn Calgary West.
“Demolition won’t occur until at least 90 days into the new year,” architect Dory VanDonzel of BKDI told Business Edge. The firm’s client, Home Depot, “will close on the deal now they have clearance to demolish the hotel.”
Plans call for a scaled-down Home Depot store on the west side of the site. Sixteen to 20 townhouses are slated for the northeast part and parking for the southeast.
GENESIS MOVES AHEAD
A Calgary land development company says it has something unique to offer at its new business park – a direct hookup to the Internet.
Arthur Wong, vice-president and chief operating officer of Genesis Land Development Corp., says that the North Calgary Commercial Campus at Balzac will offer a fibre-optic connection to the cable at Highway 2.
“This will put us a step apart from any other business park in the Calgary area,” says Wong.
Development is expected to start this spring on the 247-acre property, located two minutes north of city limits and 10 minutes from the airport. It will eventually be developed into a business park with more than 3,000 employees.
The Municipal District of Rocky View recently rezoned the area to direct control. It can be used for light industrial, office, retail, research and commercial development.
Wong says the first phase will be about 60 acres in an L-shape so a road through the development can be built. Genesis plans to build its own office on a lot along the highway, close to the company’s residential developments in Airdrie and at Taravista and Symons Valley in north Calgary.
SAVE ENERGY, SAVE BUCKS
It might not be too late to contact Climate Change Central about energy savings software training in Calgary or Edmonton next week.
Alberta’s business-government- environmental community partnership is co-operating with Natural Resources Canada in offering the $300 program at SAIT on Jan. 12 and 13 and at the U of A on Jan. 14 and 15.
CCC program manager Sarah Waddington says the EE4 program trains people to operate the software that estimates energy savings in new building designs to help meet Commercial Building Incentive Program standards. The federal CBIP pays building owners up to $60,000 for energy-efficient buildings, and the Alberta Plus initiative will top that up by as much as $40,000 – potentially $100,000 for an energy-efficient building.
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