Aboriginal healing centre in Vancouver to relaunch as high-end boutique hotel

It's not unusual for a business that sees its plans falling short of expectations to regroup and take things in a new direction, but the story of Skwáchays Lodge seems to stretch that definition.

The lodge, located near the heart of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, started out about a year ago as an aboriginal healing centre. It's now being rebooted as a high-end boutique hotel with an aboriginal arts theme.

The Vancouver Province reports the lodge is scheduled to reopen in May and is aimed at tourists looking for higher-end accommodation downtown.

Skwáchays Lodge (pronounced squatch-eyes) is located on West Pender Street, not far from touristy Gastown and Chinatown. But it's also a couple of blocks from the Main and Hastings street crossroad, amid the poverty, drugs and crime that trouble the Downtown Eastside.

And it's a block south of Pigeon Park, which looks onto Pidgin restaurant, the scene of months of protests by opponents of creeping gentrification of the neighbourhood.

The heritage building that houses the hotel opened in 2012 with 24 social-housing suites and a healing lodge for aboriginal patients, as well as a First Nations art gallery, all operated by the Vancouver Native Housing Society.

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The healing lodge itself opened last May to considerable fanfare as a haven for troubled First Nations people who make up a third of the neighbourhood's residents, according to this CBC News report posted on the society's web site.

Eighteen of the building's suites were reserved for First Nations people from outside Vancouver who could use them while in the city for medical treatment.

However, demand for lodge accommodation fell short of expectations, so most of the rooms earmarked for out-of-town patients are being redeveloped for tourists, Vancouver native Housing Socciety executive-director David Eddy told the Province.

Each hotel room will have its own aboriginal theme and authentic First Nations artwork.

“The idea is to give people not just the mythology but a sense of who we are as a people,” Corrine Hunt, an artist working on one of the rooms, told the Province.

Even before the renovation, the lodge began accepting guests last year for the available rooms via the travel web site booking.com and expedia.com.

Demand was brisk from cruise-ship travellers and Eddy said $250,000 in revenues exceeded the projection of $200,000.

"We were totally surprised," he said, adding that with the newly renovated suites, expectations for this year will be comparable.

“I feel pretty comfortable that we’ll achieve our goal or get pretty close,” he said. “We think we’ve taken the idea of social enterprise to the next level.”

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Revenues are being used to pay off the housing society's $2-million mortgage on the Pender Street complex.

The idea of converting the lodge into a boutique hotel was sparked by a visit from third-generation hotelier Jon Zwickel, who was showing visiting friends who specialized in aboriginal art some of Vancouver's First Nations galleries, the Province said.

A stop at the society's Pender Street gallery led to a meeting with Eddy, said Zwickel, president of the hotel property-management firm InnVentures.

“As I got to know the mandate of the society and the things that he deals with and his vision for social enterprise within the society, it made eminent sense for me to become involved," he told the Province. "Their challenge was making the hotel profitable.”

Zwickel said his tour through the building revealed their was no connection between the generic suites and in the healing lodge and the vibrant aboriginal art in the ground-floor gallery. He hit on the idea of giving guests a "unique aboriginal experience."

The revamped rooms will cost an average of about $225 a night, the Province said.

Guests can also enhance their experience perhaps by learning how to carve, weave or paint from an aboriginal artist.