The Athabasca Grand Union Hotel has changed ownership as of June 30.
Although the identity of the new owners is not known as of press time, according the old owners, the new owners of the Union also own other properties in Athabasca.
The conglomerate of six Athabasca residents that owned the building decided that after eight years, they wanted to sell, so in 2013, the storied brick building on the corner of 50th Street and 50th Avenue went up for sale.
Two owners of the building had moved to St. Albert, leaving Kevin Romanchuk, Brian Rabin, Glenn Martin and Noel Major to operate the hotel.
“The hotel needs more attention from us, and we just don’t have the time,” Martin said.
The old owners said they knew it would take a while to sell the hotel.
“We didn’t want to drop it to a fire sale price at this time,” Martin said. “It took a while before we started getting interest in it.”
Martin explained one possible deterrent was that the impression given by the real estate listing was that the Grand Union was a functioning hotel.
“We don’t have a lot of room rentals,” Martin explained. “If people are looking at buying a hotel, they are looking at room revenue, and that throws them off. It is really a heritage site with a bar and a restaurant and potential room occupancy.”
Martin explained the old owners have left all the options open for the new owners.
“It needs some investment. We didn’t have the time to run the business,” he said. “We wanted to give the new owner the opportunity to do what they want … rather than renovate it and force the renovation on them.”
Romanchuk said the hotel’s age also plays a part.
“It just turned 100 years old,” Romanchuk said. “It needs some care and attention.”
Martin said the possibilities are endless for the new owners.
“Some of the opportunities are to renovate the hotel rooms and run it as a hotel, or to convert them to suites and run it as a residential apartment building,” he said. “We didn’t want to invest a lot of money and have the new owner’s vision not be congruent with what we did.”
Romanchuk stated the day the sale closed was bittersweet, and his partners agreed.
“We were pretty excited when we bought the hotel on Dec. 1, 2005,” Martin said. “When we bought it, we were all in different stages in our own careers.”
“We had a good five- or six-year run with it,” Romanchuk said.
Martin said a lot has changed since 2005 when they bought the hotel.
“The no smoking laws in bars had a big effect on consumption. The liquor laws — people are not drinking as much. It all had an effect,” he said.
The old owners said that without their amazing staff, they wouldn’t have been able to keep the hotel as long as they did.
