Preserving history while shaping Elora’s future
Pearle Hospitality rejuvenating town’s historic mill
W hen Group of Seven artist A.J. Casson visited Elora in the late 1920s, he was drawn to the sight of the five-storey mill overlooking the Grand River, near where the water crashes over a waterfall and around a tooth-shaped rock outcropping known as the Tooth of Time.
That rock island on the waterfall is so treasured by locals, the community reinforced it with concrete to prevent its destruction from erosion. Yet time changes everything and the community is well aware of this. The town’s motto is Tempus Rerum Imperator, Latin for “time, commander of all things.” Here, the push and pull between preserving historic beauty while marching inextricably into the future is as constant as the water crashing around that rock.
Casson, who died in 1992, certainly felt that tension. He painted “Old Mill Elora” in his uncluttered style, emphasizing features of the worn 19th-century mill against a blue sky and landscape brushed with golds and rusts. A 1985 story in Canadian Arts quotes Casson as saying he was glad he focused so much of his work on such old Ontario village features. “In a way, it
is a record of a disappearing society and a disappearing world,” he said.
Today, heavy machinery is working away at the top of Mill Street West. The mill and nearby historic buildings and lands are undergoing a major restoration and transformation, to be completed by next spring. The project seeks to preserve some of its timeless features while reinvigorating tourism and bringing new people and jobs into the town.
The development is the work of Pearle Hospitality, which arrived in Elora in 2010, shortly after the Elora Mill property went into receivership under the previous owners, Calgary-based Tuesday Equities and Prince Royal Limited Partnership.
Leanne and Aaron Ciancone, the sister and brother team behind Pearle Hospitality, saw the beauty of the mill that inspired Casson’s painting decades earlier, and they too recognized it could soon be gone. “It’s the timelessness of it, and also the need,” Leanne says. “You know that if someone doesn’t take it and renovate it and do it right, it’s not going to last.”
So, after several years of planning and approvals, construction is underway on the first phase of a two-part project. In the first phase, the Elora Mill Hotel & Spa will include a 30-room hotel component, an event venue, private suites and a spa and fitness centre overlooking the Elora Gorge.
Pearle Hospitality got its beginnings in Hamilton, when Jimmy and Pearle Ciancone, a couple from humble dairy farm roots, established the Hillcrest Restaurant in the 1950s. The restaurant became a place where generations of Hamiltonians celebrated weddings, engagements, birthdays and all of life’s turning points. It was a community focal point for decades, largely thanks to Pearle’s big-hearted hospitality. Today’s company draws its name and inspiration from her legacy.
Aaron and Leanne Ciancone are Pearle’s grandchildren. They took over the business from their parents. Their father, Ronald Ciancone, died last year, and their mother, Marylou, 72, now manages another company called Landmark Landscaping.
Pearle Hospitality is no stranger to old mills and historic properties, as well as new builds. The company also owns the Ancaster Mill and the Cambridge Mill. Other properties include the Whistle Bear Golf Club in Cambridge, Spencer’s at the Waterfront in Burlington, and the Bread Bar restaurants in Guelph and Hamilton. It also has a 100-acre farm in Flamborough, producing seasonal fresh produce for the restaurants.
Aaron, the 40-year-old president of Pearle, has been overseeing the company’s ambitious expansion since 2006, when Spencer’s was built. Aaron has a developer’s blood in his veins. “What gets me excited is bringing something back to life, taking something that was not doing so well, or had been neglected, giving it the attention it deserves and making something great out of it.”
The company, which now has about 500 employees at its various properties, came to Waterloo Region in 2011 with the redevelopment of both the Cambridge Mill and the Whistle Bear Golf Club in Cambridge. At the time, it was known as Landmark Group, but that was too generic and common a name so, in 2015, the company was rebranded as Pearle Hospitality.
The company’s rapid growth continues, not just in Elora, but also in another multi-million-dollar investment in Waterloo Region, the planned construction of a 12-storey hotel next to the Cambridge Mill on Water Street in Cambridge and an 11-storey Waterscape condo project just to the north of that.
“We have a very exciting next five years ahead of us and we are looking at how we can grow without losing our focus,” says Leanne, 35, the brand ambassador for the company.
The seven-acre Elora project is a particularly ambitious undertaking, one that will transform the community as well as the company’s direction. Until now, Pearle’s projects have focused on event spaces and restaurants. In Elora, the company is getting into the boutique hotel and spa space for the first time, and condominiums are next.
The $120-million project includes a second phase on the south side of the river, starting over the next couple of years. It will involve condominium and boutique retail spaces as well as another restaurant and hotel. The whole complex is to be connected by a glass pedestrian bridge over the river.
Leanne says in planning the Elora development, Pearle executives travelled to Europe to take a close look at how old villages, in countries such as France, have maintained their historical integrity while they grew.
“It’s important to be authentic to the space and to have a sense of place,” she says. While it is expensive to salvage and restore these old buildings, the historic features are
what keep people coming back, she adds.
Most of the first-phase hotel rooms will be in the mill building and nearby coach house. Each room will be unique. A glass solarium facing the water is being added, and terraces too, so that hotel and restaurant guests will have views of the river and the Tooth of Time. Wood-burning fireplaces are being installed, to add to the old-world feel. The very bottom of the mill is being opened up with a staircase leading down to a wine cellar and a private dining room.
Across the street, the 1,000-square-foot James Ross House will become a private guest house and the Granary walls will be part of an event space with 6,000 square feet on the main level for up to 100 guests and a 7,000-square-foot room on the second floor, for up to 180 guests.
A spa and fitness centre being built where
the stable building used to be on the west end of the property will also feature a three-floor glass solarium with view of the majestic gorge and river system. “It will be a place of total relaxation,” Leanne says.
The company has also moved and expanded a micro-hydro plant connected to the Ontario hydro grid. It is generating one megawatt of electricity, enough to offset the power used by the entire development.
None of this could have been imagined in the 1830s when pioneers arrived to take advantage of the powerful waters of the Grand and Irvine Rivers running through a gorge up to 22 metres deep that was cut by glacial meltwaters in the 450-million-year-old dolostone bedrock.
By the late 1850s, when the present stone mill walls were built, Elora had become a hub of agricultural and industrial activity. The mill was both a grist mill that would grind the farmers’ grains into flour and a saw mill that cut logs from area forests. The Granary was where people could pick up their dried goods and hardware store products.
In the early 20th century, it was used by the J. C. Mundell Furniture Co. for finishing furniture. The mill stable was home for draught horses and wagons that carried the flour produced from the mill to the railway station in Guelph. Wagon repairers, blacksmiths, furniture makers, distilleries and a tannery were among spin-off industries that emerged around the mill.
But huge technological, economic and social shifts happened over the course of a century. Gradually, industries eroded away. Cars replaced horses and wagons. Industries converged and centralized their production.
In the 1950s, the mill was operated by Norman Drimmie and his sons who cut lumber and sold cement. But it was no longer central to the local economy.
What did endure was Elora’s beauty. In the 1960s, artisans began settling into the picturesque community. It became more of a tourist destination than an agricultural and industrial hub. In 1974, the Drimmie family sold the mill property and it became the Elora Mill Inn hotel and restaurant.
This latest development will definitely bring changes to the community. The condominium project will add to the population and Elora will become more of year-round destination.
But just as the Tooth of Time was reinforced to preserve it, “We also want to accentuate what is originally here, because that is what makes it beautiful,” Leanne says.