Sod turns for new Comfort Inn and Suites

A year after the project was announced, it is now officially a go for construction of a new 105-room Comfort Inn and Suites hotel in North Battleford.

Officials representing CCR Hospitality/BCP Construction, Terracap Group of Companies (owners of Frontier Centre mall) and municipal representatives were at the ground-breaking ceremony Friday morning.

The hotel will be built on a two-acre lot on the south side of Carlton Trail just north of the mall.

For civic officials it was a relief to finally see shovels in the ground for the project, which was announced last September but which still had to go through a number of approvals at City Hall before construction could proceed. 

Now, the intention is to have the hotel completed and open by Sept. 1 of next year. It is a concrete and steel modular design, and the intention is to finish the foundation before winter hits.

During the winter months the plan is to build all the modular units in their plants, and then those will be shipped to North Battleford. 

“We will have the foundation in before frost this year, and then folks in town will start to see the modular (pieces) coming in and being stored on site, and then it’ll go up. And it will probably only take about a month for the whole building to go up once we put it on the foundation,” said Billy Coles, president of CCR/BCP.

He estimates some 250 people will be working on the project from beginning to end, with plans to involve many local companies in the process.

“We always hire lots of local people because there’s always lots to do on a project of this size,” said Coles.

The hotel is backed by a partnership called North Battleford Hospitality L.P., which is made up of CCR Hospitality/BCP Construction as well as several local investors, as well as Terracap Group.

The hotel project is the first one for North Battleford since 2006.

“It’s badly needed,” said Terracap CEO Larry Krauss, whose company had looked into a new hotel for a while.

“We feel North Battleford is underserved in terms of hotel rooms, so we wanted to contribute to having a hotel brought to the area.”

Krauss is hoping the hotel will attract a number of other developments to the area, including new restaurants.

Already there is a sign up on Terracap’s property advertising a possible Mr. Mike’s franchise opportunity, and another sign is up at the corner of Pioneer Avenue and Territorial Drive for a Montana’s opportunity.

Not far away is land on Railway Avenue where a new A&W is going up. A new Kal-Tire is due to go up nearby on 110th Street. Farther away, construction is well underway on a new Dairy Queen on 100th St. and a new Magic Lantern cinema complex has been announced for the downtown.

It is a healthy amount of building activity for North Battleford at a time when other cities in western Canada are suffering difficult economic times due to the oil price crash.

As for why North Battleford is still attracting investment and new development, Krauss points to “stability.”

“We’ve found it to be a very solid place to be,” said Krauss. “The economy is diversified, so you don’t have the ups and downs of economies that are dependent on one resource. You have health care here, you have retail, you have manufacturing, you have farming, you have tourism.” 

City officials including Councillor Cathy Richardson and City Manager Jim Puffalt welcomed the continued confidence in the North Battleford economy.

“It shows the commitment and people’s understanding of where the city is and we’re open and poised for growth,” said Puffalt.

The hotel construction is not the only activity coming to that area.

A new signal-controlled intersection is due to go up at the access next to the Co-op gas bar on Carlton Trail. The plan is for that road to run south from the Co-op and then access the back of the hotel property.

Tenders should go out in September for that project, according to Puffalt, with construction happening in the spring. 

Puffalt noted there were “hard negotiations” with the various groups involved to make the hotel happen. Coles credited the City’s team for the process as well, adding that this project was “by far the easiest to do” because “everyone’s on board” with the project.