No crane? No problem for hotel expansion
Engineers’ innovation helps Montreal building reach new heights
MONTREAL— Engineers from around the world flocked here last year to watch the Germain family expand their boutique hotel.
Ironically, Le Germain Hotel on Rue Mansfield in downtown Montreal was originally erected as an office tower in 1967 during Montreal’s Expo 67 building boom to be the new headquarters of Quebec’s order of engineers.
But Christiane Germain, copresident and co-founder of Groupe Germain Hotels, bought the office tower in 1999 and converted it into one of Montreal’s first boutique hotels. It was her family’s third hotel in their campaign to have 20 hotels across Canada by 2020.
After 20 years, Germain and her brother Jean-Yves, co-president of the family-owned chain, wanted to expand the Montreal hotel by adding six floors to its 11-storey structure.
However, the hotel fronted onto a busy downtown street and was hemmed in by other tall buildings. There was no place to anchor a tower crane and a mobile crane would be too disruptive to downtown traffic.
Christiane Germain’s daughter Marie, a graduate of mechanical engineering at Queen’s University with a master’s degree from McGill, is in charge of architecture and engineering for all hotels in the chain.
She knew of a family of engineers in Montreal that proposed an innovative method of erecting highrise steel and concrete buildings without using a crane. Joey Larouche, his father Gilles and his cousin Justin own Upbrella Construction.
On the roof of the existing hotel, they built the roof of the addition, and when complete, 21 hydraulic jacks lifted the roof up one storey. Upbrella then started the next floor, which was also lifted up when finished. Upbrella did that for each floor and said any highrise of any height can also be built that way, even starting on the ground.
That’s why engineers and architects from around the world came to Montreal to see the six floors added to the hotel. It was the first time that construction method had been used in North America. Germain and her brother closed Le Germain for a year during the $30-million project and opened again just before Christmas.
One thing that impressed visiting engineers was that the construction workers remained comfortable and warm in the midst of a wicked Montreal winter because polycarbonate sheets hung from the finished floor above to create a sheltered cocoon around the construction activity. A YouTube video shows the whole process.
Marie Germain says it’s not the innovative engineering that draws visitors to Le Germain Hotel.
“It’s the superb service we always try to offer that has built our reputation.
“Our family learned that from my grandparents, who owned and operated a chain of restaurants and grocery stores in Quebec City. They always said it was friendly and quality service that kept bringing their customers back.”
Christiane and her brother went to New York City in 1985 on family business and checked into a boutique hotel — a new trend in the hotel business.
They were so impressed with its design and function they decided to try something similar in Quebec City. They converted three floors in one of their parents’ downtown residential buildings in 1988 and opened the 126-room Le Germain-desPrés.
It broke all the rules of traditional hotel rooms — for one thing, no bathtubs. Each room had a walk-in shower with glass floor to ceiling and bright colours everywhere.
“We lost several investors in the project because they thought a hotel without bathtubs could never be successful,” Marie Germain said.
Nine years later, the sister and brother converted the 1912 Dominion Bank in Quebec City’s Old Port into Hotel Le Germain-Dominion. Readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine ranked the hotel, now called Le Germain Hotel Quebec, at No. 7 on its list of Canada’s top 10 hotels for 2019.
Quebec City’s chamber of commerce asked Christiane Germain to host a talk by former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, who spoke to 8,000 fans last September about her new autobiography. And Le Germain Hotels was named one of Canada’s 50 best-managed private companies last year.
When renovating Le Germain in Montreal, they extended the second floor out beyond the building’s original footprint to create a restaurant with floorto-ceiling windows looking out on busy Rue Mansfield, plus down the length of President Kennedy Avenue, which terminates at the hotel.
To salute the 1967 roots of the original building, interior decorators created a ’67 atmosphere with the in-room and lobby furniture and the wallpaper in the bright bathrooms. Sitting on the throne, you can read the walls, which are finished with newspaper pages that describe many of the city’s highlights during Canada’s centennial year — such as Expo 67 and the Montreal Canadiens winning the Stanley Cup during the 1967-68 season (their ninth in a span of 15 years — they would also win again the following year).
Alt Hotels is the budget wing of the chain and, including two that are still under construction, comprises 12 of the 20 hotels in Groupe Germain across Canada.
A full continental breakfast comes with your room in Le Germain. In both styles of hotel, you’ll find fresh mineral water on each floor, plus a Nespresso coffee machine in each room.
There are two Le Germains and one Alt Hotel in the Toronto market. One Le Germain is at Maple Leaf Square, where thousands of Maple Leafs and Raptors fans with no tickets gather on the closed street to watch their teams on big outdoor screens.