Room service? Find me another hotel
April 22, 2009
Andrew Dreschel
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/552575
Even in the face of the groaning economy, there's no shortage of proposals for building new hotels in the downtown.
Today, city staff is scheduled to review the site plan for a 160-room Element by Westin on Main East at Walnut, where the Modern India Buffet was originally located.
The 200-room Hilton Suites planned by hotelier Darko Vranich at Main and Bay streets has already received site plan and building elevation approval, subject to some minor revisions.
And developer Harry Stinson swears he'll have a sales trailer on site in a few weeks and shovels in the ground by summer for the Hamilton Grand, his 177-suite hotel-condo project, recently relocated to the southeast corner of John and Main streets.
The missing piece in all this hustle is, of course, the grand old lady -- the Royal Connaught.
The 13-storey Connaught, which closed in 2004 and was bought by a consortium of local businessmen the following year, remains firmly in limbo.
Plans to either renovate or sell the 1916 landmark that all but occupies a full block between King, Main, Catharine and John streets, have come to naught.
Tony Battaglia, who represents the ownership group, says the economic downturn has made it even harder to get financing.
"We've been to the well and found it somewhat dry," says Battaglia.
"So we're just at a standstill right now, hoping that the economy will turn a little sooner and maybe lenders will ease up a little bit and hopefully get the project back on the go."
The building is not listed for sale but Battaglia says a couple of expressions of interest didn't amount to anything concrete.
Stinson, whose own offer to buy the Connaught for $9.5 million fell through last fall, insists he's still interested in a joint venture with the owners, but admits he doesn't have the wherewithal to buy it outright.
"All I can add is intellectual value and hard work," says Stinson.
Still, setting aside the stagnant Connaught, the promise of all this activity is music to the ears of David Adames, executive director of Tourism Hamilton.
Adames argues that a city with half a million people drastically needs more full-service hotels in the core in order to compete for the lucrative meeting and convention trade.
According to Adames, there are currently about 1,000 hotel rooms across the city, including more than 600 in the core.
He'd like to see that inventory rise to 2,000 to 3,000 rooms in total, including 1,500 to 2,000 in the heart of the city.
Adames says the lack of capacity is not only forcing the city to go after smaller meetings and conventions, it's also having an impact on the number of conferences we're attracting.
Last year, the city hosted 43 meetings and conventions. That was down from 69 in 2007 and 74 in 2006.
Other factors such as increased competition, overall fewer conventions and natural locale rotations may have contributed to the fall off.
But Adames maintains the city needs to bump up its capacity to really make its mark.
"For some associations, for their conventions, we're just not on their radar screens because they know we don't have enough accommodations for them."
To help rectify that, city council has made a policy decision to offer incentives on development charges for building hotels and, according to Adames, staff is in the process of putting together a plan to actively seek hotel investors.
So, far from being saturated with hotel projects, Hamilton needs more of them.
More crucially, it also needs to see those that are now being talked up go from site-planning approvals to ribbon-cutting completion.