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CAMBRIDGE BAY
Two years ago, Bruce Peterson got a 55-inch television.

Bruce Peterson, owner of Cambridge Bay's Green Row Executive Suites, was at the 2012 Kitikmeot Trade Show. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

Soon after, every executive suite at his Green Row hotel in Cambridge Bay got a 55-inch satellite television.

The policy has been the same since Peterson opened the popular hotel business at the centre of the hamlet almost 12 years ago, when he had a 36-inch TV in his home.

"We were determining what TV size we were going to put in and I said, 'Whatever we're watching, that's what our clients are going to be watching,'" Peterson told News/North. "We're going to give them what we want. So we put 36-inch TVs in."

The Cambridge Bay businessman's policy extends to all aspects of Green Row Executive Suites, and has not come cheap.

Not including furniture, renovations estimated at about $45,000 per suite have been ongoing since Peterson bought the three sixplexes from the territorial government "in somewhat of disrepair" around 1999.

The 18-units were residential housing for government employees at the time, and Peterson immediately raised the subsidized rates more than $300, to an economic rent, as he financed debt.

"We got a rude awakening," Peterson said. "All the government employees moved out. Every single one of them. We were sitting there with a building with nobody in it."

This was a good time for Peterson's brother Keith Peterson, the Government of Nunavut's minister of Finance, to say "I told you so," after advising him not to go into business in the North many years before, when Peterson first established Aurizon Investments Ltd., operator of Green Row.

"I've told him since 1983, don't get into the business because it's very difficult to do business in the North," Keith Peterson said. "But here he is, 29 years later, doing fine."

The government exodus of Green Row turned out to be a fortunate event for Peterson, when the would-be landlord was forced to turn his property into what would soon be one of the most popular hotels in the territory.

Peterson's personal TV policy proved to be a strong business strategy, as the hotel, which has been profitable since the first year, benefits from return customers and a lot of good comments.

"That's what makes us feel good, that we're providing good product," he said. "And we have a lot of people that don't want to go home," Peterson added with a laugh. "Because they've been spoiled rotten. You don't see that in most hotels."

There is talk of a hotel rating system being set up in Nunavut, and Peterson knows where he wants Green Row to be ranked.

"We want to be at the top of that list," he said.

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