Courtesy: Jason Herring | News Source: edmontonjournal.com

The ICE District Joint Venture is changing its strategy for one of its core properties.

The group announced plans to convert 12 of Stantec Tower’s 37 residential floors to hotel space on Thursday, a move Oilers Entertainment Group spokesman Tim Shipton says is a bid to capitalize on demand for high-end accommodations.

“The appetite in the city for this premium hotel space is massive,” said Shipton. “When you have a project of a scale and scope … you have to be flexible to market demands, you have to be flexible to what your customers and your market are saying.”

Shipton says negotiations are ongoing with hotel chains but say the space will be run by a “prominent hotel brand.” He says the target audience for the units will be business travellers and long-term stays.

The conversion will require some residents to move from their current units to ones on higher floors. There are no plans announced yet for what a reception area will look like.

The OEG already oversee one other hotel in the ICE District: the JW Marriott. Shipton says the new hotel development will be “complementary” to the existing operation.

“It’s not going to be a carbon copy, certainly, of the JW Marriott,” he said. “I would say a little bit more limited from the offerings perspective, but still high-end.”

At this time, Shipton says about half of the building’s 483 current condominiums had sold. The conversion will repurpose about 130 of those residential units.

There’s still more residential development to come in the ICE District, with the planned Block BG tower set to add another 568 residential units to the area. Shipton says he believes there’s going to be heightened demand for high-rise residences in the future but that in the short term adding more hotel space makes more sense.

“There’s no doubt that the economy in Western Canada has been soft, and with some of these plays, from a residential perspective, the runway is a little longer,” he said.

At 66 stories and 251 metres, Stantec Tower is the tallest building in Canada outside of Toronto. The building’s first 29 floors are dedicated to office space.