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Media Coverage
The Calgary Herald, December 22, 2007 Hot Springs Heat Up By Marty Hope Please scroll down for the article
Hot Springs Heat Up Billion-dollar B.C. project to take 25 years to finish About 119 years ago, Sam Brewer crossed the border from the United States, found his way to the Columbia Valley of B.C. and bought a chunk of mountainside property he turned into away station for stagecoaches operating up and down the valley. Since that time, the property, which includes the hot springs located on it, has been a popular destination for Canadians and foreign visitors to Fairmont Hot Springs—and a string of owners who have done their part to upgrade the property from its meager beginnings as farmland into four-season resort. About 10months ago, Ken Fowler of Ken Fowler Enterprises crossed four provincial borders from southern Ontario and found his way to the Columbia Valley, where he eventually bought the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort. He made the purchase from CEO Carol Seable, daughter of the resort’s long-time owner Lloyd Wilder. Fowler is planning to undertake a $1-billion renovation of the 800-hectare, all-season playground. But he didn’t stop there. It includes the 18-hole Riverside Golf Resort and the developable lands around it. No other details have been announced. The Riverside land has several apartment condominium buildings located between the front and back nine holes of the golf course, as well as duplexes and single family homes set back from several fairways. Ken Fowler Enterprises (KFE), is a St.Catharines, Ont.-based private investment firm with more than $100 million invested in a broad spectrum of companies. The company holds interests in several well-known Western Canadian restaurant chains, including Earls Restaurant and Joey Tomato’s Mediterranean Grill, as well as apparel firms such as West 49and J.Michaels. The purchase of the Riverside land puts 45golf holes under the ownership of the company and is part of a corporate strategy to “make Fairmont a great golf destination,” says KFE’s vice-president of development, Richard Haworth. He sees the acquisition of the award-winning course and the land around it as an integral part of Fairmont and the need for a single planned vision for the community’s redevelopment. An avid cottager who enjoys the outdoors, Fowler relishes the idea of buying and developing recreation properties. Speaking about his vision for the Mountainside property, Fowler says: “It’ll be close to a billion dollars when it’s all finished in 25 years or so. “We decided to redo it, to create a Whistler type of resort—something with a heart to it.” Already a weekend or vacation getaway, he foresees an even stronger contingent of Albertans purchasing in the new-look development. Fowler estimates about 80percent of the buyers will be Albertans, with about 80per cent of those from Calgary—“but it can become an international destination.” The resort currently has a lodge with 120 rooms, a 300-person conference centre and a small interior boutique area. It also has four restaurants, an 18-hole course, a par-three, nine hole course and an RV parkwith 310 sites. Initial redevelopment plans call for the construction of several hundred single-family homes and condominiums to complement the approximately 1,000 residential units already there. It will also create 100,000 square feet of retail space in a mountain village around the existing lodge that will also have improvements made to it, along with a redesign and expansion of the ski hill. The project is to include installing a gondola from the hill to where the tennis courts now stand, making further improvements to the Mountainside 18-hole golf course, construction of an indoor/outdoor water park near the main entrance from Highway93/95, and relocation of the existing hot pools. Fowler is even planning to upgrade the existing 6,200-foot airstrip south of the Riverside golf course to accept 727 and 737 jets. The first step in the redevelopment will be the construction of 56 single-family homes to the north of the existing development. They will be added to a resort community that already has 1,000 detached homes, townhouses and villas. “Picture 4,000 t0 5,000 doors when we’re done,” says Fowler. For Fowler, Fairmont will be his second resort and recreation housing venture. His company is currently developing Red Leaves, a luxury resort community on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ont. “That was our first totally integrated resort that included a retail element—the Fairmont became available,” he says. “This has a lot of growth potential and could become another Red Leaves.” After nine months of negotiations, the deal closed in September. But work on the multi-pronged master plan for redevelopment started about a year ago and still has about six-months work before it is ready. So, Fowler becomes the newest owner of this piece of valley dirt—a chain of ownership that started with George Geary, an Englishman who homesteaded the land in 1887 before selling to Sam Brewer a year later. If you’re a golfer, you’ll be interested to know that the shell of the old house behind the par three running laterally across the south end of the course is Geary’s original home. In the early1900s, British manufacturer W. Heap Holland bought the property from Brewer after becoming intrigued by the flow of hot spring water and operated it as a ranch and resort. After he died, his son became an absentee owner with a manager in residence. In1957, Earl and Lloyd Wilder came from Saskatchewan and, along with a group of investors, bought the resort. Eight years later, Lloyd bought Earl out and took sole ownership. He began a major expansion, which resulted in what is there today. Now it’s Fowler’s. “The amenities are all there— we’ll just tune them up a little bit and we’re ready to go,” he says. “It’s my dream to make Lloyd Wilder’s dream become reality.” For additional information regarding the project, click on the logo: 
Reprinted from The Calgary Herald |
