Hyatt owner blames economic slump for slow progress in The Quarters
The Hyatt Place Hotel still regularly sees empty rooms, in part due to the sluggish development of eastern downtown, the hotel’s owner said.
Nearly a year after it opened its doors, the 255-room hotel currently sits at a 50-per-cent occupancy rate, lower than a healthy 65 per cent. And the retail space on the ground floor of the hotel lies empty.
Owner Prem Singhmar — who owns other establishments in the greater Edmonton area — said the hotel at 9576 Jasper Ave. was planned during a boom cycle in Alberta as a part of The Quarters plan to fix up a neglected part of the city’s core.
However, the province’s economic slump has hindered the continuation of The Quarters plan and the eventual end of construction in the region.
“We are hoping that more development will come in the area, but nothing has started, so far at least,” he said.
Singhmar blames low oil prices and a general economic slump for the slow development surrounding the hotel.
“What happens in one month now takes two months. There’s nothing we can do until things get better,” he said.
The Boyle Street Community League mostly supported the Hyatt during its formative years and, said the league’s vice-president Candas Jane Dorsey.
It was an ambitious project and one that she hopes will help draw interest to the area.
However, the plan for The Quarters has temporarily slowed due to interest in new, flashier developments, she said.
“There was this flirtation with the Ice District,” she said.
Mary Ann Debrinski, director of urban renewal with the City of Edmonton, said there is another issue facing future developments nearby.
It took the city five years to acquire all the properties necessary to house the Hyatt Place Hotel. The neighbourhood is made up of numerous small lots and, in some cases, each lot can be owned by multiple people.
As a result, it can take 10 years of negotiations to assemble large enough plots of land to make largescale developments. Contrary to what many developers believe, the city only owns around 10 per cent of the land in the area, she said.
“Because there are so many small lots and they’re owned by so many owners, it takes a long, long time to assemble a site that’s big enough for a redevelopment,” she said.
Debrinski said the city has spent around $70 million in the area to get to this point, not including funds used for LRT construction.
“We’ve worked very hard to be at this point,” she said.