The performance of Nanaimo’s publicly funded Vancouver Island Conference Centre will be understudy in a new market analysis.
The City of Nanaimo announced it hired Toronto-based commercial real estate company CBRE to do a market analysis on the conference centre and proposed Gordon Street hotel.
The city announced the company and its work Friday, two weeks after it hired CBRE. The work began Jan. 29 and is expected to be completed by the end of March.
With a $60,000 budget, CBRE is set to analyze industry trends and the operational history of the centre to what a proposed hotel means for the performance of the centre.
The city is also looking to get information on a prospective hotel, according to Bill Corsan, the city’s manager of real estate, who said the study will look at whether a hotel project is economically viable, what kind of project would be the most sensible and to which market the Gordon Street site would be sold.
The last time the city did a market study on the conference centre was in 2004.
Mayor Bill McKay said the study will give prospective purchasers for the Gordon Street lot an idea of what to expect and will compare original projections, traffic volumes and delegate days predicted in 2004 with actual results.
The original market study accounted for a hotel.
“If we are looking at the performance of the conference centre without the hotel, hopefully this will give council a much better handle of what they could expect with an operating hotel based on today’s numbers,” McKay said.
Coun. Gord Fuller said this market study will determine if the centre should continue to be subsidized, if it’s viable and if a hotel would help make it viable.
“It should give us some direction,” he said.
The city plans to use information from the market study for its request for proposals on its Gordon Street property, long-reserved for a conference centre hotel. The VICC will also be part of a core services review.
