A city committee has given Claridge Homes the green light to build a 16-storey addition to the Andaz Hotel in the ByWard Market.
The planning and housing committee Wednesday approved Claridge’s proposal to demolish a two-storey building at 110 York St., east of the existing hotel, and replace it with 106 new hotel suites. The 47,000-square-foot expansion will also include a ballroom.
The site plan calls for 26 parking spaces to be reserved for hotel guests in a new underground lot at nearby 141 George St. that will serve Claridge’s proposed 22-storey condo tower on that site.
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The hotel addition recently got the go-ahead from the city’s built heritage committee, which also had to approve the proposal because it falls within the ByWard Market heritage conservation district.
City staff said the existing red-brick building at 110 York St., which was constructed in the early 1950s by the Union St. Joseph du Canada as office space, has “no heritage significance” and did not object to its demolition.
The Union St. Joseph du Canada headquarters next door at the corner of York and Dalhousie Streets was torn down in 2014 to make way for the Andaz Hotel.
The new addition is smaller than the one Claridge originally proposed in 2018. At the time, the developer said it wanted to construct a 19-storey structure with 136 suites and a 3,600-square-foot ballroom.
Claridge’s move to expand the Andaz comes amid a surge in new hotel construction in Ottawa as the tourism industry bounces back from the pandemic.
Three new Marriott-branded properties built by Montreal’s Rimap Hospitality – the AC Marriott on Rideau Street, the Moxy on York Street and the Marriott Renaissance on Slater Street – are expected to open downtown next year, and development applications were filed earlier this year for new hotel projects in Nepean and Orléans.
Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association president Steve Ball told OBJ in August the new projects will help replace inventory that was lost during the pandemic.
While the local hotel industry’s recovery has been slower than in some other Canadian cities because of its reliance on government clientele that has been slow to return, Ball said occupancy rates were getting closer to pre-COVID levels.
