Vancouver entrepreneur John Evans plans to expand his Opus Hotel to cities such as Calgary and Ottawa even as the brand prepares to lose its Montreal presence.
Evans was part owner of Opus Montreal until the ownership group last month sold the property to Quebec-based Tidan Hospitality and Real Estate Group. The new owners of the real estate and business could have opted to keep using the Opus Hotel brand but have chosen to rebrand the property, Evans told Business in Vancouver.
Evans and a different set of owners own the real estate and the booming business of the Opus Hotel in Yaletown, across from the Canada Line.
“There are no plans to sell the Vancouver property,” Evans stressed. “A lot of national meetings have come to the hotel and the decision rested on the green footprint and that all the participants can come on the Canada Line.”
Evans has a long history in the development and hotel business.
He bought Montreal’s Godin Hotel with partners in July 2007 for an estimated $25 million and then rebranded it Opus Montreal.
He got into the development business in 1978 when Joe Houssain invited Evans to join a small real estate venture that Houssain had established along with Houssain’s cousin, Moh Faris. That venture would grow to become Intrawest Corp.
Evans left Intrawest in 1989 after helping the company build 1,500 units of rental housing across Metro Vancouver, buy and add infrastructure to Blackcomb Mountain and establish several specialty retail developments.
One post-Intrawest project was when Evans lured Cressey Development Corp. into a joint venture to build the Westin Grand Hotel. The Grand’s 207 rooms sold out in a week of pre-sales in November 1997, and the hotel opened in April 1998.
That success taught Evans that Vancouver lacked high-end boutique hotels so started raising money to build the Opus on a heritage site made available by a warehouse fire.
