Donald Trump, the billionaire New York real estate investor, said he formed a partnership with Canadian and Malaysian developers to bring his brand of luxury lodging and residences to Vancouver.
The C$360 million ($350 million) Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver will be the second Canadian hotel-and- condominium development to carry the name, joining a 65-story Trump tower in Toronto that opened last year. Planned for Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver and scheduled for completion in mid-2016, the 63-story structure will have 147 hotel rooms and 218 condominiums, Trump said in a statement.
“We had another opportunity in Vancouver and this was the one we chose,” Trump, chief executive officer of closely held Trump Organization, said yesterday at a press conference announcing his involvement in the project. “And believe me, I have no second thoughts even about it. This is going to be special.”
Holborn Group, based in Vancouver, and TA Global Group of Kuala Lumpur are building the Trump tower on a site originally slated for development under the Ritz-Carlton brand, Joo Kim Tiah, Holborn’s chief executive officer, said at the press conference. That project, also involving Holborn, was canceled in 2009 amid the global financial crisis.
Trump Organization will manage the hotel and assist in the marketing of the condominium units.
It’s unclear how the Vancouver tower and Trump brand will be received by potential condominium buyers, Michael Ferreira, a Vancouver-based real estate market analyst at Urban Analytics Inc., said in a telephone interview.
“Vancouver doesn’t strike you as a Trump kind of city -- it’s not a New York, it’s not a Toronto -- it’s Lotus Land, the relaxed West Coast,” he said on June 14. “We haven’t historically liked to show off our wealth.”
The tower will be the largest luxury residential development in Vancouver since before the financial crisis, Ferreira said.