City’s newest hotel opening soon on urban reserve

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This article was published 29/07/2022 (1142 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s newest hotel, The Wyndham Garden Winnipeg Airport, is just about ready for guests.

The 132-room hotel on the Long Plain Madison Reserve — located at 460 Madison St., just a couple of blocks from Polo Park shopping centre — will have a grand opening in early October but most of the facility will be open for business by the middle of August.

The hotel includes a swimming pool and water slide, restaurant, lounge and coffee shop.

“It is a gorgeous property,” said Joel Waterman of Sparrow Hotels which will be managing the hotel. Sparrow also owns Inn at the Forks, the Norwood Hotel and the Mere Hotel and manages the cafe at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The hotel features a large glass fronted ballroom with a total of 5,800 square feet of flexible meeting space including an elders room meeting space.

Waterman said a grand opening was originally planned for early August but global supply chain delays meant that certain guest room amenities were not available and management was not sure some technologies were going to be totally ready to go.

“We gave ourselves some grace period,” Waterman said. “It will be better to have it open for a bit to be ready for the grand opening.”

In the meantime, guest rooms, the restaurant and coffee shop and meeting rooms will be open to accept bookings starting in mid-August.

The hotel is owned by Long Plain First Nation and will be operated by Sparrow Hotels.

The three acre Madison Reserve – bounded by St. Matthews Avenue on the north, Madison Street on the west, Silver Avenue on the south and Kensington Street on the west — was officially set aside as a reserve in 2013 after being acquired from Manitoba Hydro as part a fulfilment of Canada’s outstanding treaty land entitlement to Long Plain First Nation dating back to 1994.

It completed a municipal services and development agreement with the City of Winnipeg in 2010, which allowed development of the property to begin.

The urban reserve already includes a Petro-Canada gas an convenience store, and a 28,000 square foot commercial building that houses Yellowquill College – Manitoba’s only First Nation owned, operated and controlled post-secondary institute that has been offering First Nation programming for 37 years — and a number of other Indigenous organization offices including Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba and Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca