City to re-examine hotel for convention centre
PENTICTON — Nearly a decade after abandoning a plan to encourage construction of a hotel attached to the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre, city council wants to take another run at it.
Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday night in favour of a motion to “direct staff to report back with an outline of the steps necessary to achieve a hotel attached to the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre as part of the North Gateway Plan.”
The motion was put forward by Coun. Isaac Gilbert, who praised those who had the foresight to open the facility on cityowned land in 1965 in a bid to drive economic activity.
Today, he continued, the PTCC suffers from a well-known inability to compete with other convention centres with attached hotels. Gilbert also pitched the hotel idea as a solution to pending changes to provincial legislation that will outlaw many short-term rentals, and a counter to a reduction in commercial flights to the city.
Gilbert was quickly reminded, however, about what happened last time the city ventured down the path.
Back in 2015, the city got deep into the process of exploring ways to attract a private developer to build a new hotel at the PTCC, but the effort was shut down by the discovery of a covenant from 1912 that was placed on 325 Power St. requiring it be used only for public benefit unless voters approve a change via referendum.
Coun. Helena Konanz, one of two members of the current group who were in office back then, descried it as “quite the process” that revealed deeply polarized views of the plan.
Still, “I would love staff to come back and dust off that staff report from (nine) years ago and give a presentation on what happened, and why we would need a number of things, including a referendum, in order to allow a private business to build on that location,” said Konanz.
Coun. Campbell Watt, who was also in office in 2015, is also interested in taking a second look.
“I wouldn’t typically support what quite literally looks like somebody wants to satisfy their curiosity,” said Watt, alluding to Gilbert’s motion, “but, having said that, I know that if we spoke to the governing body of the events centre and convention centre, they would love to have a hotel attached to it,” said Watt.
Gilbert -- who stressed he has no desire to see green space given up for a hotel -also noted the world is a different place than it was in 2015.
“We have to evolve and be able to challenge the things that we have. We have a deficiency in hotel accommodations in this city,” said Gilbert.
The lone vote against the motion was cast by Coun. James Miller.
Since 2015, two new hotels have gone up near the PTCC.
Both were built by Kamloops-based Mundi Group, which does not have an exclusivity deal with Penticton, according to city manger Anthony Haddad.