algonquin said:
really? cool
Whoa, you didn't know about Connaught? tsk tsk well here ya go....
Downtown's granda dame getting Trump treatment
Donald Trump walked into the Royal Connaught the other day. The lobby was a mess. There was falling plaster and graffiti everywhere.
Trump saw beyond all that. He looked around and said. "This place has good bones."
This Trump is an actor, working on a movie that airs on ABC this spring. It's called Ambition and it is Trump's story.
The crumbling hotel Trump actually walked into back in the 1970s was the Commondore in Manhattan. Like our Connaught, it was a grand ruin. Pimps and hookers patrolled outside its doors.
His own father told him he was crazy, but Trump bought the place and artfully pulled together the financing to make it shine again. The hotel, now the Grand Hyatt, beside Grand Central, came alive and so did the neighbourhood around it.
As it turns out, on the day they're shooting in the lobby, we have an appionment above, top floor, corner office, with the Hamilton man trying to pull a Trump at the Royal Connaught.
Tony Battaglia and four partners bought the hotel in January. They paid $4.5 million for the historic shell. In all, this is a $30 million plus project.
The consortium also includes Ramada Plaza owner Oscar Kichi, Ted Valeri of T. Valeri Construction, Labouers' International Union of North America vice-president Joe Mancincelli, and Mario Frankovich, president of investment firm Burlgeonvest Securities. They nominated Battaglia to manage the Connaught rebirth. He's head of Westpark Developments and chairman of TradePort International, the organization that runs Hamilton's airport.
The gutting and rebuilding is not yet under way, so it's OK to rent out the lobby for a movie shoot. A set crew spent three days making the place looks bad, but that decay is all done with paper and waterbased paint.
There may be another movie or two shot here. But Battaglia is itching to get moving on his new project. He's relinquished the president's chair at TradePort, but sees many parallels.
The airport and the Connaught are both important to the city. Both have a history of failure. Both suffered a lack of investment dollars to make them successful. And, like our airport, the hotel needs repositioning.
The Connaught was built to be grand in 1916. But in recent decades it went downscale, trying to compete with other hotels in town. That didn't work and there was no money reinvest in the property. It finally went bankrupt.
The plan now is a page straight from Trump, five-star elegance all the way. Over the last six weeks, several hotel chains have come by to take a look. The Fairmont people, who run the Royal York and others like it, are not interested in a Hamilton alliance. But Marriott, Hilton, Delta might be.
They will submit proposals on fee schedules soon.
Yes, Battaglia admits, that stretch of King East is rough. "But as the fellow from Marriott said, 'We can create sort of an oasis.'"
The first floor will be commercial. Floors 2 to 7 will be hotel rooms, about 140 of them, down from 207 now. Starting rates are about $135. Battaglia says an occupancy of 65 per cent would be enough for a visible operation.
Floor 8 to 11, plus a rooftop Starlight Room, will be condos.
"We're looking at those floors as a blank canvas," Battaglia says. Purchases will be able to carve them up the way they want - an 800 square foot unit, or something four times that size. There's already been an expression of intent from a party of means to take the Starlight penthouse plus 5,000 square feet on the floor below it.
There's now short list of five architects. Their submissions will be in by next Thursday and an architect in place by the end of the month. Then there will be three months of preliminary design and budget crunching.
Everything goes. Furniture, mattresses, lamps, curtains are already en route to other hotels. Every tub, sink, toilet gets torn out. So does the pool and the old heating, plumbing, wiring.
"This hotel needs a full organ and artery transplant," Battaglia says.
It could cost $12 million to bring back the hotel section alone. The condos could be another $8 million. And $8 million more for a four-storey parking garage.
"Downtown Hamilton is a tough place to get money for a hotel." Battaglia admits. But sometimes this summer, after the design and budget stage, and after the chain affiliation is settled, the job of firming up financing will begin. Battaglia says that should take three months. If that's on track, construction starts in the fall.
The dream date for completion is June 5 of next year, the hotel's 90th anniversary.
It's likely they'll miss that target. But Battaglis says he knows he can make this project go. No one is going to step up and say, "Tony, you're fired."