Vancouver's Donnelly Group, known for previously owning iconic Vancouver pubs such as Cinema, Bimini's and the Railway Club, is completing financial restructuring in order to exit creditor protection, the company announced today.
"It's been a long and intense process, which is now due to end happily thanks to our determination and the remarkable patience of our principal creditor BMO," said CEO Jeff Donnelly.
A stay of proceedings extension was registered on Sept. 25, leaving room until Nov. 1 for the company to finalize restructuring terms, according to Donnelly.
"Our opportunity, with BMO's support, is to keep this company together and continue to employ our staff, serve our communities, and ensure that great hospitality remains integral to our collective culture."
Donnelly sold several of its best known nightspots in the past couple years.
Its Freehouse Collective division's website lists 11 Vancouver pubs and eateries, including Ballyhoo, Lamplighter, Three Brits, Isabelle's and Stock Room. It also lists five pubs or eateries in Toronto.
It recently opened two Sing Sing Beer bars: on Commercial Drive in Vancouver and on Adelaide Street in Toronto.
Freehouse plans to open a third Sing Sing Beer bar in Toronto this fall, and in the spring in Langley's newly constructed Courtyard at Willowbrook Shopping Centre.
The company filed for creditor protection in May 2023, when it owned 18 hospitality businesses, three barbershops, a cleaning company and the brewery Bomber Brewing.
Its businesses remained open, but risked permanent closure if a financial deal with creditors did not happen.
Donnelly told BIV last summer that getting creditors' support was vital to save his 900 to 1,000 employees' jobs.
While the Bank of Montreal is Donnelly's biggest creditor, he said last summer that there were dozens of others.
The company in 2019 launched the cannabis retail brand Hobo, and Donnelly told BIV that he planned to expand the chain to nine stores, including eight in B.C. and one in Ottawa. By 2022, the company operated eight B.C. stores.
Controversy swirled because some in the cannabis community took offence with the name Hobo so Donnelly rebranded the stores as Dutch Love. He operated the stores under his company's Lightbox Enterprises Ltd., which sought creditor protection in 2022 and then started selling the stores.
