Coquitlam will soon lose a hotel.
This month, staff at the Best Western Plus Coquitlam Inn Convention Centre on North Road were told the facility would close next year to make way for a mega-residential/commercial development, to be built by Anthem Properties — a company with a considerable portfolio with land holdings in Metro Vancouver, Victoria and Alberta as well as the United States.
A spokesperson for Anthem Properties declined to comment on its 4.5-acre acquisition and the general manager of Best Western Plus did not immediately return a call Tuesday; however, Jim McIntyre, Coquitlam's general manager of planning and development, told The Tri-City News that Anthem has applications into the city to change the land use at 319 North Rd. that would see the hotel razed and construction of five apartment towers with 65,000 sq. ft of commercial space below.
The bid call for 400 new homes in the high rises — ranging from 23 to 46 storeys tall — in the Lougheed neighbourhood, which is currently undergoing a visioning study by the municipality in conjunction with the Burquitlam neighbourhood.
Anthem's rezoning application is expected to be before city council before the summer break. "It's a pretty ambitious project," McIntyre said, noting the proposed development would be a first for Anthem in Coquitlam.
Still, the upcoming disappearance of the hotel will hurt economic development and tourism — both for Coquitlam and the Tri-Cities, said Michael Hind, CEO of the Tri-Cities Chamber Commerce.
With the hotel gone, the region will only have five hotels (Best Western Chelsea Inn, Executive Plaza Hotel, Coquitlam Sleepy Lodge, Ramada Coquitlam and PoCo Inn and Suites Hotel) to serve a population of nearly 200,000.
"This will put a strain on the hotel space that we already have," Hind said, "and it's not a very positive message to send out that we may have difficulty accommodating our out-of-town guests."
He added, "We have built some great civic facilities here, especially for sports, but teams could be squeezed out and stay in Surrey and Burnaby instead. What that means is they won't be spending their dollars here and we won't be getting those economic spinoffs."
But Pasha Sheikh, general manager of the Executive Inn Hotel in Coquitlam, argued the loss of his nearby competitor "isn't a big issue. We don't have 100% occupancy and right now, it's soft. I don't know how much of an impact this will have. We may have some spike but not that we should be concerned about."
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said he's hopeful the long-awaited hotel at Hard Rock Casino Vancouver will go up "relatively quickly" to replace the Best Western on North Road.
In a statement, Raj Mutti, vice president of western operations for the parent company, Great Canadian Gaming Corp., told The Tri-City News, "We are still very interested in the development of a hotel at our Hard Rock Casino Vancouver property and we are continuing to explore multiple options to bring such a development to the marketplace."
Coquitlam's economic development manager David Munro said city staff and council are trying to attract hoteliers to the city — the sixth largest in the province — and hope to spread out the properties more out geographically (currently, the Coquitlam hotels are clustered in the Lougheed/Burquitlam neighbourhoods).
A hotel in City Centre, for example, would serve sports and shopping tourists and the municipality has some land holdings it could leverage in the core, which is now serviced by rapid transit.
Munro said the city is pitching the idea of mixed-use hotels that would enable the properties to be busy throughout the week — not just on weekends.
"We have to change our perspective and look at different models," he said. "A stand-alone hotel may or may not work here so an idea is to include commercial and/or residential components in the hotel, like in Hong Kong."
"Right now, we're just planting the seed and we're getting a lot more interest."
jcleugh@tricitynews.com
