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Posted May 28, 2011, 12:28 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Halifax
Posts: 4,529
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Quote:
Posh hotel to land?
Quebec firm eyes airport site
The lobby of the hotel Le Germain in Toronto. The owner, which has six hotels across the country, has been looking in the Halifax area since 2006 for a suitable location and could set up in the airport area in 2012.
By CHRIS LAMBIE Business Editor
Sat, May 28 - 4:54 AM
A HIGH-END boutique hotel chain out of Quebec is negotiating to build one of its elegant establishments at Halifax Stanfield International Airport.
Le Groupe Germain, which has six hotels across the country and a seventh under construction, has been scouting the Halifax area since 2006. The Quebec City outfit, founded in 1988, has been eyeing the airport location in particular for at least three years.
"They’re going to build that, apparently, right at the terminal," a source said Friday of Germain.
An airport official was reluctant to release details Friday.
"We have been in discussion with a hotel developer for a number of months and we continue to pursue that, but I am not in a position to say who it is or what the timeline is specifically," said airport spokesman Peter Spurway.
"We are well along in those discussions, but not to the point where we can confirm anything."
Should those talks end well, the hotel could be built within 17 months.
"If things fall into place, it could be open before Christmas of 2012," Spurway said.
An official from the family-owned business was equally reticent to discuss the details of building the airport hotel.
"At this point right now, I’m not able to comment about that," said Hugo Germain, the chain’s director of development.
Le Groupe Germain owns and operates two brands of hotels.
"Germain is our upper-scale boutique concept that we operate right now in Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and Calgary," Hugo Germain said.
"We have another brand, which is ALT. ALT is a limited-service, three-star, no-frills chic concept that we operate in Quebec City right now and Montreal. And we’re currently in construction right now at Toronto Pearson."
Hugo Germain would not say which brand the chain would prefer to build at Stanfield.
But in 2008, Christiane Germain, the hotel chain’s co-president, told The Chronicle Herald that it hoped to build an ALT at the Halifax airport.
Last year, the chain announced that it was planning to spend as much as $240 million to build 10 ALT hotels over the next five years, including one in Halifax.
The airport wants to see a 150-room hotel attached to the terminal, said Spurway, who confirmed a deal has not been signed.
"We put out a request for proposal several years ago, and this is all part of that great, long process to bring a hotel to the airport and attach it to the terminal building," he said.
In January 2010, the Halifax International Airport Authority, citing a slower than expected recovery from the economic recession, killed a deal with partners New Castle Hotels LLC and Southwest Properties Ltd. to build a hotel within walking distance of the terminal.
That project would have cost about $30 million.
Meanwhile, construction is slated to start in September on a 120-room hotel near the airport.
Mississauga, Ont.-based developer Manga Developers, headed by David Toor, is behind the Marriott Courtyard, which will cost more than $6 million to build.
Manga also owns the Holiday Inn and the Hilton Garden Inn near the airport.
The Marriott Courtyard will include a 5,000-square-foot conference room.
Maxim Construction, headed by Lewis Tiller, is expected do the work on that project, slated to be completed by the fall of 2012.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1245610.html
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Wow two more Hotels at the Airport! One at the terminal and a new Marriott Courtyard.
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