Cactus Restaurants Ltd. last night opened its 23rd and largest restaurant – the $7.5 million, 10,000-square-foot Cactus Club Café-branded restaurant at Jack Poole Plaza in Coal Harbour.
Fanfare surrounding the opening included lighting the Olympic cauldron between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.
“We’re super-excited to be opening at Jack Poole Plaza at Coal Harbour,” said Cactus president Richard Jaffray. “The views from the location of Stanley Park, Coal Harbour and the North Shore Mountains are just amazing.
“There aren’t many locations where you’re downtown and on the water on the edge of a plaza.”
Jaffray plans to open restaurants in:
- downtown Edmonton in late summer;
- Langley in the fall;
- Saskatoon late 2013 or early 2014; and
- downtown Toronto in 2014.
Cactus Club Coal Harbour has 500 seats, including 200 patio seats. That includes private dining space.
Jaffray last year told Business in Vancouver that he has been spending substantial sums to build new restaurants that are customized to his exact needs because it is more cost-effective than retrofitting existing restaurants.
For example, he spent:
- $7 million to build a restaurant in the Bentall 5 tower in 2008;
- $6.5 million to build a restaurant in Edmonton in 2009; and
- $6.5 million to open a restaurant in Abbotsford in 2011.
Cactus Restaurants will pay the Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC) for lighting the cauldron last night, Jaffray told BIV.
The minimum charge is $5,000 plus a 5% administrative fee to light the cauldron for up to four hours, according to VCC spokesperson Jinny Wu.
