Bruce Constantineau
Sun
Arthur Erickson-designed the Ritz-Carlton will be going up on West Georgia where demolition has already begun
The world-renowned Ritz-Carlton hotel brand will touch down in Vancouver by 2011.
A 127-room Ritz-Carlton hotel will occupy the first 20 floors of a new 58-storey, Arthur Erickson-designed twisting tower to be built at 1133 West Georgia.
The $500-million-plus Holborn Group project will also contain 123 luxury condos on the top 38 floors — at prices ranging from $1.4 million to $13 million.
“We’ve been talking to the developer about Vancouver for over four years,” Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company senior vice-president Michael Beckley said in an interview. “Toronto and Vancouver have been in our sights for quite a long time, so we’re very happy to have such a great location.”
U.S.-based Ritz-Carlton operates 63 hotels in 21 countries, but none in Canada. A Ritz-Carlton hotel in Montreal is not officially part of the chain, but it’s expected to join the group after its new owners complete a renovation.
A new Ritz-Carlton hotel in Toronto is expected to open in 2009.
Beckley said there are just a few cities in Canada where a high-end Ritz-Carlton hotel will thrive, and Vancouver is clearly one of them. He also said it was important to join forces with a quality developer like Holborn, controlled by Vancouver entrepreneur Simon Lim.
“That’s very important to us because we can’t put our name on a building and have it fail,” Beckley said. “We just can’t have that.”
The Georgia Street location, between Thurlow and Bute, has been a vacant and derelict Vancouver eyesore for more than a decade. It was originally to be a private members’ club and then a strata-title office building in the 1990s, but both projects failed and it has remained a concrete shell ever since.
Holborn Group bought the property from Cadillac Fairview about three years ago. Demolition of the site is under way, and construction of the hotel/condo tower is set to begin early next year, with an early-2011 opening.
The condo portion of the project will be called Residences at Ritz-Carlton, and the entire building will be managed by Ritz-Carlton. Condo owners will have access to hotel amenities such as 24-hour room service, a concierge, housekeeping service, and staffing for special entertainment events.
The 1100-block West Georgia area has become a hotbed of upscale boutique hotel projects, with the 77-room Loden planning to open its new property near Melville and Bute this fall, while the 119-room Shangri-La Hotel is scheduled to open near Georgia and Thurlow in September 2008.
Beckley knows there will be a lot of competition in the area, and said that’s a big reason why Ritz-Carlton chose to operate a relatively small hotel in Vancouver.
“Wherever we put a Ritz-Carlton, we shoot to be No. 1, and it will be possible to achieve that because the hotel isn’t that large,” he said.
Beckley said bigger hotels require meeting and convention space, which can lead to convention attendees wandering around all over the place.
“That can make it hard to get to the level of sophistication you want,” he said.
Beckley said the new hotel will target high-end global business and leisure travelers, and notes the chain has a large database of clients who like to stay at Ritz-Carlton hotels all over the world.
He said the company originally wanted to open the hotel in time for the 2010 Olympics.
“But rather than rush it, we’re content to come in behind the event. The Olympics will put Vancouver on the global map, and we’ll be out there marketing ourselves during the Olympic year.”
Shangri-La Hotel general manager Stephen Darling welcomes the entry of the Ritz-Carlton brand to the Vancouver market.
“We’re very respectful of Ritz-Carlton and see them as one of our primary competitors in North America,” he said. “When a top-end brand comes to Vancouver, it’s going to have a tremendously positive effect on the overall market.”
Vancouver realtor Bob Rennie, who is marketing the project, said he’s not surprised the western portion of the downtown core has attracted so many new hotel/condo developments.
“It’s the only land left in the city,” he said. “You just can’t find major downtown sites any more. We’ve been undersupplied in the luxury hotel market so hoteliers have been wanting in.”
Rennie said condos in the “hyper luxury” development will range from 1,000 to 4,000 square feet and expects to attract many downsizing local buyers from “signature” neighbourhoods such as Point Grey, Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale and West Vancouver.
Preview events are expected to begin later this month, with sales beginning in October or November.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
