The Royal Connaught

Published in HMag, March 2008

The Royal Connaught Hotel is a gritty-looking building with a gilded past. Is Harry Stinson, one of Toronto’s fallen former idols, the benevolent benefactor that this Hamilton hotel needs? When it was built in 1916, The Connaught was Hamilton’s premier hot spot, attracting high-profile guests and acting as a hub for social lives lived in the Golden Horseshoe. Boasting an opulent ballroom, elegant lodging and an old guard commitment to hospitality, it should have aged the way of the Empress, the Chateau Frontenac or the Royal York. Bouncing between owners for almost a century will take its toll on any old gal though. Almost every former owner – from Citicom to Joymarmon to Howard Johnson – has walked away from the Connaught a few million lighter. Even Canmac Hotels, a corporation known for pulling crumbling buildings back from the brink, gave up after two years and sent the Connaught into receivership in 2004. The hotel’s current owner is The Connaught Development Group, a consortium of local developers including Tony Battaglia and Joe Mancinelli. When they bought the building in 2005, it was with plans similar to Stinson’s – renovate and reopen it as a hotel/condo hybrid with boutique retail on the main floor. Plans never moved much past the early stages and the Connaught sat in reno-limbo for three years, gutted and glory-less under a faded green and white HoJo sign. This past February, when Stinson offered 9.5 million for the building, the Development Group, which originally paid 4.5 million for the building, agreed and a new buzz began. Would Stinson be the one to finally turn a derelict downtown building around? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time. Stinson was one of the masterminds behind the 1993 conversion of the Candy Factory Lofts on Toronto’s Queen Street West. Long before that stretch of the strip was the hipper-than-thou West Queen West it is today, it was simply a place you didn’t walk alone at night. Stinson supporters are optimistic that his vision for the Connaught will put a similar polish on an otherwise dull block of downtown, galvanizing Gore Park and the International Village just as Candy Lofts did to Queen. Stinson is of a similar mindset. He is confident that the Connaught could be the catalyst Hamilton needs. Once surrounding businesses feel that something significant is happening as far as retail and commercial ventures go, the quality of those ventures will change. Businesses, companies and individuals who were hesitant about investing in the core will want to get in before the rent goes up. Another of Stinson’s victories are the nearly full High Park Lofts in Roncesvalles. Ditto Toronto’s exclusive condo suites at 1 King West which, though they ended in a kind of personal failure (after a falling out with financier David Mirvish), proved wildly successful. The building maintains an exclusive image and high occupancy rates, both of which were in place before Stinson was forced to file for bankruptcy protection and step down, something that Hamilton architect John Mokrycke thinks is a little suspicious. Mokrycke was responsible for bringing Stinson to Hamilton in the first place. “When I heard [Stinson] was giving up on Toronto in favour of Stateside development, I thought, ‘no, he has to come to Hamilton.’” Mokryke said. “So I called him up.” The next day he was meeting Stinson for lunch at James North’s Acclamation Bar and guiding him on an all-day foot tour of the city. Shortly thereafter, Stinson was putting an offer on the Connaught, and touting a proposal Mokrycke is confident he’ll make good on. Stinson has an eye for this sort of thing; for waltzing into a city and seeing, in a single afternoon, what some diehard Hamiltonians have yet to realize. This vision is part of what draws comparisons between Stinson and Donald Trump, the American real estate mogul with the solid gold touch. In fact, the two had a friendly competition in 2007, when Stinson planned to trump Trump’s 57-storey International Hotel & Tower with his own 90-storey Sapphire Tower. Unfortunately, his touch proved only gold-plated. The plan was scrapped and the site sold due to height and shadow concerns. Perhaps in the Connaught, Stinson sees the opportunity to do what Toronto wouldn’t allow. Indeed, the rough renderings for the project paint an impressive picture – a tall skinny sliver of silver glass that stretches up the back of the Connaught, twice as high as any building on the Hamilton skyline – but it’s one that locals have seen before, with the Sapphire. In reality, Stinson says, the tower may be slightly shorter but he won’t settle for any less than 50 storeys. “We want it to be a nice bookend to the Century 21 building,” he said. “When people come along Main Street, they should focus on [those towers] as a gateway to the city.” The condos contained within will be two to four bedroom units with anywhere from 1,000-4,000 square feet and price tags rang from $300,000 to one million dollars. “The average builder is price-driven,” Stinson said. “We’re design driven. These are big apartments designed like homes. You will not be trading down by moving into these condos.” As for the existing Connaught, floors one through four will house a boutique hotel with less than 100 rooms. Floors five and up will be converted into what Stinson calls “efficiency suites”: fully furnished, one-bedroom condos that will be sold as secondary residences for out of towners, interns at Hamilton hospitals and lawyers who are fed up with ferrying back and forth between Ancaster offices and Hamilton’s downtown courthouse. A second loft building of six or seven storeys will run along Catharine Street, offering customizable condo space. Buyers will be able to purchase the condo shell for around $199,000 or pay a higher price for any combination of a veritable menu of options including drywall, exposed brick, open ceilings, and large versus small kitchens. There is some concern that Hamilton isn’t ready for large-scale real estate development like this. Chief among the arguments is the fact that condos often serve as an alternative to astronomically priced downtown housing. This is not the case in Hamilton, where detached, centrally located homes can still be found for less than $200,000. However, current trends seem to deflect this argument. On the opening day of Bay Street’s Core Lofts, the line of potential buyers wound from the building’s entrance, around Jackson Street to Caroline. Almost one-third of the 105 units sold that day. The remainder went within the next two months. Since then, Allenby Lofts, Stone Lofts, Margaret Street Lofts, Rebecca Lofts and Chateau Royale condos have also sold at a steady pace. “Hamilton is long overdue for a new and exciting large-scale condo project,” said Andrew Karpavicius, a real estate agent with Judy Marsales. “The only way to make downtown more prosperous is to get people living there. Their friends and family will see what our downtown has to offer and want to live there as well.” Of his own decision to live loft-style, Karpavicius cites simplicity. It’s a lifestyle choice. He doesn’t have the time to shovel snow, cut grass or tend to all the little things that pile up when you’re a homeowner, and he’s not the only one. The newly built Madison Lofts on the mountain filled quickly with aging baby-boomers who want the nest without the upkeep. Young couples and new professionals may prefer the price tag of a condo to a modestly priced house. When the McMaster Innovation Park on Longwood is up and running, CEO Zach Douglas estimates it will create upwards of 2,000 new jobs over the next decade. Hamilton real estate is already booming, the city is slowly filling and the Greenbelt limits the land available for new development. Eighty storeys of condo is a lot for a city that may just be warming up to the idea of loft living, but as Stinson said, you can’t expect results without taking the chance. Confidence is key. He gets daily phone calls from the media, asking whether or not he is serious about this deal. What are the plans? Is he really going through with them? Has he secured financing? “Do I have 9.5 million dollars in a briefcase, lying on my desk, that I just haven’t dropped off yet? No, I don’t. Am I confident that the financing will be in place by June [the closing date for the Connaught]? Yes I am,” he said. “Financing is a complete red herring in Hamilton. Hamilton is not a poor place. This city just needs a shot in the arm.” For a city that can only grow out so far, it seems the only way to go is up