Work is officially underway on a new hotel and meeting complex in the eastern Winnipeg suburb of Transcona.
The sod turning ceremony for Manitoba’s first Best Western Premier Hotel, with Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman participating, took place in April in recognition of the first phase of the project.
The developer and owner of the new hotel is Sherwood Sharfe who is best known as Saskatoon, Sask.’s largest General Motors dealer.
The 4.4-acre property, which was formerly an empty lot, is located next door to Vickar Mitsubishi and Vickar Community Chevrolet, an auto dealership that was formerly owned by Sharfe’s father-in-law and is Winnipeg’s largest GM dealer. The property itself has been owned by the Vickar-Sharfe family for several decades.
The new hotel is also just a few blocks away from Winnipeg’s largest casino which is also a major concert venue.
The $20-million first phase of the complex has been designed by Calnitsky Associates Architects, who are currently designing hotels in both Saskatoon and Kelowna, B.C.
The new hotel is being built by Bird Construction. The six-storey, 100,000-square-foot hotel, with 141 guest rooms including a Prime Minister’s Suite, is being built utilizing steel, concrete block and hollow core plank, notes Ed Calnitsky, principal at Calnitsky Associates Architects.
“We are using non-combustible construction throughout the hotel,” he says.
The building, which will be barrier-free and fully sprinklered, features a durable energy efficient acrylic-based exterior insulation finish system, with a smaller ecological footprint than other traditional claddings, he explains.
“Bird is one of the best construction firms in the country,” he adds. “It is a pleasure working with them.”
He reports the project will employ between 35 and 70 workers.
The new Best Western Premier Hotel is scheduled to be open for business on Sept. 1, 2019.
Calnitsky states there is no timeline as of yet for phase two, which consists of an attached event centre with banquet and meeting rooms that will be able to accommodate up to 300 people.
“The event centre would be the first of its kind in the Transcona area,” Calnitsky says.
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