MMF walks away from bid to buy Fort Garry Hotel

The Manitoba Métis Federation won’t buy the historic Fort Garry Hotel, President David Chartrand said Monday.

“The price just went too high and we walked away from it,” he said in an interview from Toronto, where he’s attending the Canada investment summit.

The MMF and its Chinese investment partner “might build a new hotel together now,” Chartrand said.

“It’s just not that we don’t have the money with our partner. We definitely have the money, but we both see the same thing — that our return (on investment) would take too long versus what we’d like to see.”

The federation has purchased several downtown buildings in recent years, including the former Bank of Montreal building at Portage Avenue and Main Street. In July, it announced the purchase of the former National Research Council property on Ellice Avenue.

The independently owned Fort Garry Hotel, acquired by local entrepreneurs Ida Albo and Richard Bel, and Quebec-based Laberge Group in 1993, went on the market in May for the second time in seven years.

The four-star, 113-year-old hotel, a national historic site, did not have a list price, but it is expected to sell for tens of millions of dollars.

Avison Young, a global commercial real estate advisory firm headquartered in Toronto, and local broker Cushman & Wakefield Winnipeg, were retained to handle the sale.

“We have received multiple bids from domestic and international buyers for this premier hospitality opportunity,” Andrea Zviedris with Avison Young said in an email Monday.

“The Fort Garry Hotel has been very well received by the investment community. We hope to have more news in the near future.”

The investment brochure for the hotel says there is a “movement across the country from sophisticated public and private investors to generate significant investment value by repositioning these iconic assets.” It points to the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Fairmont Royal York in Toronto and Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal as examples.

Meanwhile, the Fairmont Winnipeg at the iconic corner of Portage and Main is undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation from top to bottom, that required it to close to guests from July 1 until next spring.

“The majority of global hotel companies have new brand classifications targeting iconic and irreplaceable hotels,” the Fort Garry Hotel’s brochure said.

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”A variety of different hotel management options could drive efficiencies boosting income results.The general hotel market and economic profile of Winnipeg is healthy. There is significant real estate investment across a variety of asset classes within the city’s downtown core.”

Located at 222 Broadway, just west of Main, the Fort Garry has 236 guest rooms and suites, a spa, restaurants, conference and banquet space, and a live entertainment venue that was home to a Yuk Yuk’s comedy club until earlier this year.

Constructed in Château style, the hotel welcomes about 80,000 guests annually and employs nearly 400 people.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.