New Lincoln, new name

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This article was published 08/01/2015 (4102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another tired, old suburban-Winnipeg hotel is getting a new lease on life.

The Lincoln Motor Hotel at 1030 McPhillips St., which is being renamed the Four Crowns Inn, is in the midst of a three-year, $1-million-plus renovation and upgrade that includes a new exterior and a complete overhaul of the beverage room, restaurant, banquet hall, lobby area and the 20 second-floor guest rooms.

The redevelopment of the banquet hall was completed last spring. The refurbishing of the exterior is also well underway, and next up is the multi-phase redevelopment of the main-floor beverage room.

“The beverage room is going to become more of a lounge/tavern feel during the week. We’ll be putting in a lot more food, so it will be a food-based bar as opposed to just alcohol,” co-owner Arieh Kravets explained in an interview Wednesday.

Kravets said it will take about a year to complete the beverage-room reno. Next year, they’ll tackle the restaurant, the lobby area and the guest rooms.

“It will be completely brand-new rooms — new furniture, new TVs, new everything.”

Kravets, his father, Boris, and another father-and-son team — Cal and Ravi Ramberran — bought the Lincoln in October 2013 with the goal of turning it back into a thriving hotel/banquet facility that area residents could be proud of, rather than just a place where people come to drink and play the VLT machines.

And while it will be another two years before the work is completed, Arieh Kravets said they’re already getting positive feedback from area residents and businesses.

“People have been coming up to us and thanking us. They remember weddings and things that went on here 20 years ago, but for the last 10 to 15 years nobody had paid any attention to it, and it had kind of gone downhill. It even had the nickname ‘the stinkin’ Lincoln,’ ” he said.

“Now we’re trying to make the best we can out of this property, and our clientele really appreciates it. It’s already changing a little bit. There are a lot of good people coming here, and it’s turning around really, really well.”

Manitoba Hotel Association president Jim Baker said the Lincoln is the latest in a string of older, suburban hotel properties that have been undergoing major upgrades in the last decade or so, mostly at the hands of new owners who recognized the wisdom of reinvesting some of their alcohol and VLT revenues in property upgrades and an expansion of their product-and-services offering.

“You’ve got to adapt to what the market wants. The days of just having a big beverage room — that’s gone,” Baker said. “And you have to commend them (the owners of the Lincoln) for moving into the food side of it. You have to do that. People are looking for a place to eat and then to have a beer, not just have a beer.”

Other suburban hotels that have undergone major upgrades are the Dakota Motor Hotel, the Red Lyon Inn (formerly the Westwood Village Inn), the Howard Johnson Hotel on Ellice Avenue (now a Holiday Inn), and the Four Points by Sheraton Winnipeg South.

Kravets said he and his partners hope the upgrades will enable them to attract more leisure and business travellers, as well as more northern residents who come to the city for medical appointments. They also hope the new lounge/tavern will attract sports enthusiasts and local teams looking for a place to go after a game.

Baker said refurbished suburban hotels such as the Lincoln also stand to benefit from the recent opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. “When there are tour groups coming in, it’s more of a budget thing. They’re going to get a clean, comfortable room that’s going to be modernized. And they’ll have access to some reasonably priced food and some entertainment, and there’s going to be parking for a bus.”

The Lincoln/Four Crowns Inn is one of four hotels the Kravets-Ramberran group owns. The others are the Viking Inn in Gimli, the Altona Motor Hotel and the Île-des-Chênes Motor Hotel.

Kravets said they’ve also done some renovations and upgrades to some of their other hotel properties, but this is the biggest reno project they’ve undertaken so far.

He noted the Lincoln’s banquet hall had been closed for about a decade, after the previous owners decided to rent out the space to The Harvest Family Church. After he and his partners bought the hotel, the church relocated to 364 Furby St.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca