OFFICE SPACE TO HOTEL ROOMS
Could 1111 West Hastings become somewhat a future trend?

by Jake McGrail
(click images to enlarge)

**The current office building at 1111 west hastings (google maps)**

We’ve covered hotel developments in this column before, including the then-impending, now-done demolition of the old Listel Hotel on Robson Street (see related links below), as well as the controversial proposal to turn the Rosellen Suites Hotel into a much larger tower on Barclay Street.

The pushes for both of those projects have been fuelled in large part by the oft-cited need for new hotel rooms in Vancouver. City council has tried to encourage new hotel construction, as in recent years Vancouver has often ranked #1 in terms of both hotel occupancy rate and most expensive average room rate in all of Canada.

There are now over two dozen hotel projects at different stages in their process across the city, and even if all of them are completed in their current form (which is probably about as likely as an MLB team coming to Vancouver) that would still only about 60 percent of the way towards the goal of 10,000 new rooms by 2030 that was set out by the city a few years ago. In short, there is a desire to find solutions to this crunch.

**A REndering of the proposed germain hotel (germain hôtels/reliance properties)**

Enter 1111 West Hastings Street. Cozied up with the Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront and the Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel, the lot is currently occupied by a 12-storey office building that’s conveniently located quite close to the Vancouver Convention Centre, Waterfront Station and other points of interest in Coal Harbour.

Recently purchased by Montreal-based Germain Hôtels and local real estate developer Reliance Properties, the two companies seek to turn 1111 West Hastings, which reportedly has a 70 percent lease rate for its offices as of last year, into a 180-room hotel.

On paper, this type of move seems to make a lot of sense. The lot already has the type of zoning needed for a hotel, and the developers don’t even plan for a full tear-down, but rather a gutting of the insides and a refresh of the existing exterior. The building certainly has a number of corporate tenants, but with an office vacancy rate hovering a little over 10 percent in the city as a whole, the businesses impacted will hopefully be able to find a new spot to move to.

This type of conversion from office space to hotel space has become more common in recent years in some other Canadian cities, most notably Calgary which at one point had an office vacancy rate over 30 percent and has since offered a financial incentive of $75 per square foot of office space converted into hotel space.

Vancouver doesn’t have nearly that high of a vacancy rate, but with how desperate the city is to create more hotels in order to not lose out on millions of potential tourism dollars, this is an avenue that - while not likely one to fill the void on its own - could provide a nice boost.

Given that it took less than four months after its submission in August of 2025 for Reliance and Germain’s application to be approved by the city, the powers that be clearly see value in this project going forward. The initial goal is for the new hotel to open in 2029, but construction isn’t yet underway.

The developers must give the existing tenants in the office building long enough notice to move out before they can begin their renovations, and the Reliance Properties website currently advertises “flexible, short-term leases” as being available inside the building. That indicates a plan to move forward with the project in the near future, but exactly how near is anyone’s guess at the moment.