Rendering....
Toronto's 'Condo King' snaps up Connaught for $9.5 million
"Condo King" Harry Stinson will be the next owner of the Royal Connaught Hotel if he can cough up the $9.5-million financing in less than 30 days.
He's already made the deposit.
He plans to turn it into a thriving landmark in time for Christmas 2009.
Tony Battaglia, Hamilton businessman and head of the consortium of investors that bought the hotel in January 2005, says there has been no sale and whatever agreement is in place is "only conditional and highly speculative."
"We have an agreement with him," Battaglia said. "If he is able to come up with the money in that short time frame, then, yes, we would sell him the property."
Stinson is already making plans.
"The see-and-be-seen place that the Connaught used to be," is how he describes the hotel and condominium project he envisions.
Stinson's plans for the bottom four floors consist of a luxurious hotel, while compact residential suites from around $129,000 would fill the remaining eight floors. A separate, residential "wow" tower with slightly larger suites would be built a little later.
Neither Stinson nor Battaglia would confirm a purchase price, but The Spectator has learned it would be a $9.5-million contract.
"They're going to get the hotel lifestyle, which used to be quite a popular way of living in the olden days, and it's still very practical," Stinson said.
He also wants to build a residential tower with larger suites at the corner of Main Street East and Catharine Street South, for opening around 2010.
"We mean that to be a wild building," said Stinson, 54. "It will be a show stopper. When you're coming in on Main Street into the city, this thing should be mesmerizing and it has to be. You cannot do this half-baked.
"I think that's been part of the problem with why things have not gelled in the last decade downtown. It's been this half-baked 'Well, we'll give it a little bit of a try and if anybody bites then we'll do something serious.'"
He says he's funding the project with a combination of private money and bank financing.
The first step is simply closing on the land, which he hopes to wrap up by early summer.
"I'm not the guy sitting in Tim Hortons just talking to my buddies about how to fix the world. I've done this before and I've done it several times.
"I'm not doing this as part of a portfolio of stuff and hoping it works out and I'll check in periodically. This is my focus."
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