Hotel X Toronto

Hotel X Toronto

View of Hotel X, June 2016
Hotel chain Library Hotel Collection
General information
Type hotel and sports club
Address 111 Princes' Boulevard M6K 3C3
Town or city Toronto, Ontario
Country Canada
Topped-out April 23, 2015
Estimated completion late 2016
Cost CA$175 million[1]
Owner Princes Gate Hotel, LP
Technical details
Floor count
  • 30 (main tower)
  • 4 (sports club)
Design and construction
Architecture firm Norr Limited, Architects, Engineers and Planners
Other designers
  • Stephen B. Jacobs Group, PC Architects and Planners
  • Andi Pepper Interior Design
Main contractor Brookfield Multiplex
Other information
Number of rooms 404
Number of suites 87
Number of restaurants 3
Number of bars 4
Facilities meeting rooms, ballrooms, cinema, pool, squash and tennis courts
Parking 411 spaces underground
Website
hotelxtoronto.com
References
"Hotel X Toronto Fact Sheet". Hotel X. Retrieved June 6, 2016. 

Hotel X Toronto is a hotel and sports club complex for conventions under construction on the grounds of Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The hotel serves visitors attending conventions, meetings and trade shows booked at the adjacent Enercare Centre and the Allstream Centre. It is expected to open in late 2016.

Design

The complex is composed of two buildings: a thirty-storey main tower and a four-storey sports club building. The overall design was done by NORR Architects of Toronto, with architecture and interior design services provided by Stephen B. Jacobs Group of New York and Andi Pepper Interior Design of Philadelphia. The original design of the building, then known as "Hotel in the Garden" was by Toronto architect Rocco Maragna. It was completely redesigned by NORR to garner the approval of the City of Toronto's Design Review Panel in 2012.[2]

The main tower holds the over 400 rooms (including suites and two penthouses), meeting rooms, restaurants and bars. The main entrance is located on Newfoundland Road, just north of Lake Shore Boulevard. The sports club building is immediately north of the tower, situated alongside Newfoundland Road north to Princes' Boulevard. It has a total of 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) space for recreation, including squash and tennis courts and a weight/cardio/physio-therapy centre.[3] To the west of the two buildings, the complex includes the revealed foundations of several of the original barracks buildings, and a landscaped plaza/garden area north and south of the Stanley Barracks,[2] which will become a pub. The Hotel holds an option to expand into the plaza area.[4]

Project history

The site was forested land when settlement by the British began around 1800. After the War of 1812, the land was cleared by the British military as a "Garrison Reserve" to support the garrison known today as Fort York. The site was used for marching, target practice, horse training and temporary campgrounds. As the 1810s era Fort York buildings aged, new facilities were built outside the fort on the Garrison Reserve. Several barracks were built on the current hotel site. One, Stanley Barracks, the former officers' building, continues to exist and is next to the hotel. During the 1800s, as Toronto grew, sections of the Garrison Reserve were transferred to other uses. The northern section became the site for a jail and an asylum. In the 1850s, a new east-west rail line was constructed along the northern boundary. The western half of the reserve became the new Exhibition Grounds for the Toronto Industrial Exhibition (the future Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)). The Canadian military would use the Exhibition Grounds for various purposes during World War I and World War II and then vacated the site, turning it over entirely to the City of Toronto. The Stanley Barracks was used as the Marine Museum for several decades. The other military buildings on the site were all demolished. The area was used for surface parking, outdoor exhibit space and midway during the CNE.

After the Direct Energy Centre (now known as "Enercare Centre") opened in 1997, Exhibition Place management sought to build facilities complementary to its large exhibitions space: meeting rooms and accommodations, that would make the facility more attractive to convention planners. A hotel was first proposed for the site in 1999, but three attempts to get the project started failed.[5] While the hotel project failed to get off the ground, meeting rooms were added with the conversion of the Automotive Building to the Allstream Centre, connected via the underground parking garage to the Direct Energy Centre. In 2008, HK Hotels (later becoming Library Hotels) won the bid to build and operate a hotel on the site.[5] Final agreement on a 49-year lease between HK and the City came in 2009, after issues surrounding archaeological issues and the Stanley Barracks were sorted out.[5] Ownership changed when Library Hotels sold a stake in the project to billionaire Alexander Rovt for US$50 million.[6]

Construction began in 2013.[7] Contaminated soil was found on the site, which delayed construction as it was identified and removed[8] at a cost of CA$5 million, paid for by the City.[9] Colder than normal winters also slowed construction, as the building was hoped to be complete in time for the 2015 Pan American Games.[7] The building was topped off on April 23, 2015.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Hotel Construction" (PDF) (pdf). CNE Board. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Manning, Evan (July 23, 2012). "Hotel in the Garden Receives a New Name and a New Design". Urban Toronto. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Bahiru, Michael (April 23, 2015). "Hotel X Now Topped-Off at Exhibition Place". UrbanToronto.ca. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  4. ↑ "Letter of Intent" (PDF) (pdf). City of Toronto. September 25, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 Lewington, Jennifer (October 7, 2009). "Let's go to the Ex's boutique hotel". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  6. ↑ "Alexander Rovt ramps up real estate buying outside New York". The Real Deal: New York Real Estate News. February 29, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Immen, Wallace (May 18, 2015). "New urban resort – Hotel X – rises at the Ex". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  8. ↑ Grief, Amy (August 13, 2015). "Here's what the hotel on the CNE grounds will look like". blogto.com. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  9. ↑ Maloney, Dan (September 7, 2013). "Contaminated soil slows Exhibition Place hotel development". Toronto Star. Retrieved June 6, 2016.

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