A tight labour market has added extra challenges to the construction of three hotels near Saskatoon’s expanding airport.
"Saskatoon is a very hot market from a construction standpoint. I think that results in challenges lining people up and getting trades," said Aman Randhawa, president of Randhawa Hotels, which is building the Hampton Inn and Suites.
This has made filling specific positions even more challenging.
"Finding a jobsite supervisor, that’s been a challenge for us. We’ve been looking for a long time but haven’t been able to find anyone," he said.
Yet the endeavour presses on with a project manager based in Edmonton and Randhawa’s father overseeing some of the work on site.
There are dozens of workers plying their skills on site on any given day, he said
Labour isn’t the only challenge.
Having built a Hampton Inn in Red Deer among other Alberta projects, Randhawa said materials are generally more expensive in Saskatoon.
"It just costs a lot more, to the point where we’ve sometimes had to source things from other places because it’s just not available in Saskatoon," he said.
This building frenzy, attracting tens of millions of dollars in investment, was made possible when the City of Saskatoon rezoned an area near the airport, making way for the Aerogreen Business Park.
"That site became available and everyone saw the potential for hotels in that area," said Randhawa.
A Courtyard Marriott was the first to open its doors on Nov. 24.
It had close to 50 workers on site during the peak of its construction, said Pierre Desjardins, project manager for Montreal-based contractor Canam Group.
The six-floor, 82,000-square-foot hotel is based on a new design.
Salil Kulkarni, the general manager of the Courtyard Marriott, said he is pleased with how the construction team performed.
"We actually have got our project done pretty quickly. I think the construction (team) has done a great job," he said.
Other contractors took notice of the rapid progress and stopped to inquire, according to Desjardins.
"(They) said, ‘OK, we’ve never seen a building raised as fast as that, so what is your trick? What kind of product do you use?" he said, adding that having access to products developed and supplied within the Canam Group is key to success.
Nevertheless, Desjardins said conditions were less than ideal at times. Like Randhawa, he had difficulty finding workers in Saskatchewan with its low unemployment rate.
He ended up importing workers from Vancouver, Calgary and Ontario. The bitterly cold winter last year was another hindrance.
"The minus 46 and 48 (degree Celsius temperature) that was definitely not helping us," he said.
Randhawa agreed with Desjardins that the brutally cold winter in 2013-2014 was a detriment.
All the aforementioned factors combined have led to delays, Randhawa acknowledged.
But, he never had hopes of being first out of the gate, he said.
"When we started out, the other guys (with the Courtyard Marriott) were ahead of us," Randhawa said.
"They broke ground before we did, so we had no expectation that we’d open before them."
With three contracting crews working on the various hotels in relatively close quarters over the past several months, it’s been necessary to pay even closer attention to deliveries of materials, Desjardins said, admitting that he accidentally accepted a shipment intended for one of the sites nearby.
A Mainstay Suites is mostly complete on the exterior, and the Hampton Inn and Suites is on pace to open by next summer.
Triple One Properties, which operates the Courtyard Marriott – featuring 135 rooms, five suites, two meeting rooms, an indoor pool and a restaurant – is also proposing an office building and a Homewood Suites with about 100 rooms that cater to longer stays, said Kulkarni.
The Hampton hotel will offer 137 rooms over seven floors, a pool, a gym, guest laundry and a small retail area by the front desk.
Travellers want the convenience of staying near the airport with free parking rather than venturing downtown for accommodations, Kulkarni said.
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