Two projects that include hotels are under construction despite the sluggish hotel market in downtown Vancouver.
Mayfair Properties Ltd. is developing the Crystal Blue Hotel and Residences at the corner of Cambie and Robson streets as part of a project that will also have 112 strata residential units that Mayfair will own and rent.
The project makes sense, said Mayfair Hotels and Resorts vice-president Zack Bhatia, because the residential market is strong enough for the rental units to be profitable.
Mayfair was saddled with city requirements to put commercial space in the building. It was restricted to building a multiple of three times the site’s footprint in residential space. The remaining multiple of twice the site’s footprint had to be commercial space.
“It could have been a hotel or a small office building,” Bhatia said, “but the area around BC Place is not an office area.”
Mayfair owns two other hotels in the vicinity, so its new hotel will enjoy cost savings from synergies such as shared accounting and management.
Because the Crystal Blue Hotel’s residential units will be for rental, Mayfair is not following the path of other recently developed downtown Vancouver hotel-and-condominium projects that secured an established luxury hotel brand to anchor the development and help drive up the value of the accompanying condominiums.
A prestigious hotel does not raise rental unit values in quite the same fashion, Bhatia said.
Recent examples of luxury hotels being built in part to boost the value of condominium units include:
- Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver;
- Rosewood Hotel Georgia; and
- Fairmont Pacific Rim.
Holborn Group has said that it also plans to include a hotel as part of its 1151 West Georgia Street tower. Names floated as an anchor tenant include Trump and Ritz-Carlton but Holborn has yet to confirm a brand. •
