Five years after stickhandling Yaletown’s Opus, David Currell takes on a new project
Bruce Constantineau
Sun
David Currell checks progress on the 15-storey, $35-million Loden Hotel (behind him) from the adjacent 43-storey, $10-million residential tower at Melville and Bute. The Loden will offer five-diamond services and amenities. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
The first new downtown Vancouver hotel in five years will open this summer under the stewardship of the same general manager who opened the last one.
David Currell has been named general manager of the Loden Hotel — a 130-room boutique property near Melville and Bute that will begin taking in guests in about six months.
In 2002, Currell was general manager of the Opus Hotel, stickhandling that hip property’s hectic opening in Yaletown.
“After the Opus, I thought I’d never open another new hotel again because it’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “But there are amazing rewards that go along with it because you take something that doesn’t exist and bring a whole new business to life. It’s exciting.”
The Loden — so named because it means “deep olive green,” which connects to Vancouver’s natural surroundings — will be operated by California-based Kor Hotel Group.
It’s a 15-storey, $35-million project being developed by the Amacon Group of Vancouver, which is also building a 43-storey, $105-million residential tower with 237 units next door.
Currell, who has spent the past 21/2 years managing a 199-room boutique hotel in San Francisco, said he’s glad to be back home in a city that’s booming with so much development.
The former Pan Pacific Hotel director of operations said the Loden will offer a five-diamond level of services and amenities, and expects to be in direct competition with boutique hotels like Opus, Wedgewood and the Shangri-La, which is scheduled to open late next year at Georgia and Thurlow.
“I think the city needs more boutique hotels,” he said. “There’s definitely a place for us in this market.”
While the Opus has a reputation as a hip hotel, Currell expects the Loden will appeal to people looking for something different.
“I think we’ll appeal to a lot of guests who have outgrown that cool, hip, sexy hotel thing,” he said. “They’re looking for something a little bit more substantial as far as style, design and service goes.”
Kor Hotel Group representative Kimberli Partlow said the company specializes in smaller boutique hotel properties. It operates 10 hotels in the U.S and Mexico and the Loden will be its first Canadian hotel.
“We bring a progressive design and very personalized service,” she said. “We expect to bring service to another level in Vancouver.”
The Loden will have 119 guest rooms and 11 suites, and room rates will range from $399 for a 350-sq.-ft. room to $3,000 a night for a 1,600-sq.-ft., two-bedroom penthouse suite.
The hotel will also have 3,500 sq. ft. of meeting space and a 16-seat boardroom and Currell expects to appeal to a lot of business travellers looking to remove themselves slightly from the “concrete jungle” in the centre of the business district.
A hotel spa is expected to open by the end of this year, and all guest rooms will feature 42-inch flat-panel TVs, DVD players, MP3/iPod docking connectivity, high-speed wireless Internet access and cordless speaker phones.
Currell said a rooftop swimming pool, with a bar-bistro facility, will be one of the hotel’s signature amenities.
Vancouver hotel industry consultant Angus Wilkinson said the Loden will open during a strong business cycle in the downtown hotel market. He noted downtown hotels averaged nearly 75-per-cent occupancy last year and had average daily room rates of more than $152 — up two per cent and six per cent respectively.
“There’s also no Georgia Hotel for the next 21/2 years [because it is being renovated], so that takes 313 rooms out of the market,” Wilkinson said. “I think everyone will benefit from that.”
He said the two most popular boutique hotels in Vancouver — the Opus and the Wedgewood — enjoy high average room rates and occupancy levels of more than 80 per cent.
“There’s room for more of that kind of product in this market,” Wilkinson said.
After the Loden opens, the next new downtown hotel properties include the Shangri-La (with 119 rooms), the Fairmont Pacific Rim with 415 rooms set to open near the convention centre in late 2009 and restaurateur Umberto Menghi’s 40-room boutique hotel slated to open at 1380 Hornby in 2009.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
