Following more than three years of construction a new nine-storey hotel in downtown Nanaimo is nearing its opening date. (Ian Holmes/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Ian Holmes

new hotel

VIDEO: Projected opening date set for new Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Nanaimo

Feb 24, 2023 | 4:39 PM

NANAIMO — Following years of talk and no action, a new large hotel beside the Vancouver Island Conference Centre is nearing its opening.

The primary contractor for the nine-storey Courtyard by Marriott hotel completed work late last year, while various sub-contractors rounded out numerous tasks to allow the 172-room business-class hotel to open.

NanaimoNewsNOW toured the facility on Friday, Feb 24, where hotel general manager Paul Dodds said they’re just a few weeks from welcoming their first guests.

“We’re down to the last week of final cleaning and correcting some deficiencies, then we’ve got 14 days with Marriott trainers with all of the departments, then it’s go live on March 14,” Dodds said.

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All of the required staff have been hired, Dodds said, who acknowledged getting the necessary workforce in place was a concern given an extremely tight labour market.

He said a management agreement, which includes a partnership with Snuneymuxw First Nation (SFN), helped identify their current 51-member team, which includes 35 full-time employees.

Dodds said additional seasonal staff will be hired, noting hospitality students at VIU will help bolster peak season requirements.

“It could have been much more challenging than it was. We’re happy with the team we have now and we’ll keep looking going forward to identify more talent and bring more people in,” Dodds said.

Amenities for the hotel located at 100 Gordon St. feature a ground-level bistro serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, a fitness centre and pool.

SFN produced art is included in the rooms and common areas of the hotel, including carvings.

A majority of the rooms have single king beds, while sixty-five units have two queen beds and 12 rooms are geared toward people with physical disabilities.

Dodds said it’s rewarding to be part of a new hotel launch and breathe new life into downtown Nanaimo.

“This was a vacant area that was underutilized space. I think adding some more foot traffic here and some more people coming down to Commercial St. and the waterfront, it was long overdue.”

Erralyn Joseph, president of Snunymuxw First Nation’s economic development arm Petroglyph Development Group, said they have a majority ownership stake in the new hotel.

Joseph, who’s also an SFN councillor, said hotel employment opportunities for numerous SFN members in a variety of positions including management, food services and housekeeping provides significant opportunities.

“This is a very important initiative to our people, it’s overdue for Nanaimo to have Snuneymuxw have such a major equity stake in something so important and needed for the community. It reconnects us to this parcel of land and tells the story of who the Snuneymuxw people are.”

Joseph sees a hotel as a vital place to share their history with original art placed throughout the hotel creating “a warm feeling” for everybody.

“It puts Snuneymuxw people out in the open to share a bit of our history and that’s very important,” Joseph told NanaimoNewsNOW.

A new hotel beside the publicly owned Vancouver Island Conference Centre (VICC) is seen as essential to maximizing economic benefits of the facility.

Since the VICC opened in 2008 the City of Nanaimo has fiercely pursued the private sector to build a hotel on the vacant land at the Gordon St. site wedged between the conference centre, Port Theatre and Casino Nanaimo.

Several unsuccessful suitors produced plans to build a Gordon St. hotel, but none materialized until Utah-based PEG Development stepped up.

Construction crews arrived on scene late in 2019 to ensure a building permit deadline did not lapse for the project, which had estimated completion dates of 2021 and last year.

Bill Corsan, the City of Nanaimo’s director of corporate and business development, expects an occupancy permit for the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel to be awarded imminently.

The hotel qualifies for a 10-year municipal property tax exemption; a program which the City enacted in 2012 to encourage investment in local hotel and motel development.

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ian@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @reporterholmes