Hotel receives permit to add 12 rooms
Discovery Inn on Franklin Avenue still needs construction license
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Friday, January 27, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The city has approved a development permit for a 12-room expansion of the Discovery Inn.
The 41-room hotel is part of the Discovery Inn Centre building at 4701 Franklin Ave. that includes The Red Apple restaurant and Yellowknife Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
The application was submitted in 2015 and approved Jan. 18 by development officer Vic Fontanilla. The approval was followed by a standard two-week appeal period that ends Wednesday. The company will still need a building permit before construction can start, said Wenyan Yu, the city's acting director of planning and development.
Edward Tse, manager of the hotel, declined to comment until all permits are in hand.
Plans at city hall show the rooms would be added to the southeast wing of the building toward the neighbouring H&R Block building.
The expansion will result in a reconfiguration of the parking lot, reducing spaces from 26 to 19. There will be an addition of areas for motorcycle and bicycle parking.
The city's zoning bylaw would mean the property needs 42 parking spaces though the development officer approved a 54.8 per cent variance for reduced spaces. A parking study by Dillon Consulting carried out as part of the permit process concluded the hotel needs 21 spaces.
Joey Cruz, president of the Yellowknife Hotel Association, didn't directly comment on the expansion because the hotel isn't one of the group's six members. He said the city's hotel market has been affected by a number of factors, including the addition of 141 rooms when the Chateau Nova hotel opened in September.
"That has eased some of the busy nights where it's hard to get a room but there are two sides of the coin," he said, adding the flip-side is there are more rooms during slower parts of the year as well, not only because of the new hotel but dozens of Airbnb units in the city.
While demand for rooms has increased in the peak aurora viewing months of August, September, February and March, he said there has also been a decline in demand from government and corporate sectors. The supply of rooms is set to grow even more with an addition to the Chateau Nova Hotel and a separate Nova Builders Inc. 31-room hotel at the base of Twin Pine Hill.
