East Vancouver cultural institution the Waldorf Hotel has been sold to a real estate development company, forcing its imminent closure.
The Waldorf, built in 1947, re-opened its newly renovated doors on October 31, 2010 with a vision to create a cultural hub in the heart of East Vancouver. In the summer of 2010, a 15-year lease was signed by a group of partners led by Thomas Anselmi, Ernesto Gomez, Scott Cohen, and Daniel Fazio, who worked to restore the building to its former glory.
A restaurant, hotel rooms, a world-renowned tiki bar, two nightclub spaces, a recording studio, and an art gallery were housed under the re-imagined Waldorf's roof.
The Waldorf was growing into an economically viable and profitable business, but, given the scope of the project and its "middle of nowhere" location, the partners say that the first year was a financially difficult one and that the landlord, Marko Puharich, was sympathetic, forgiving some rent to give the project breathing room.
But in August 2012, the property was on the market and Waldorf's growing pains allowed the landlord to terminate the lease.
Anselmi and Gomez were informed early this January that the complex had been sold to the Solterra Group of Companies, a condominium developer who has chosen not to negotiate a new long-term lease, offering a week-to-week lease until September 2013, when the property must be delivered vacant.
"We obviously can't move forward under these conditions as our business requires commitments to artists, organizations and entertainers months in advance," Anselmi explains in a press release. "The irony that the Waldorf was taken over by a condo developer in the very area we helped reinvigorate is obvious to anyone. The Waldorf filled a void. People responded because they needed it. We tried to stand for something authentic and real in a city with thousands of empty condominiums and a community starved for cultural spaces."
He estimates that 60 employees will be out of work due to the closure.
During its tenure, recurring events such as the Cheaper Show, the East Side Culture Crawl, the Goethe-Institut, the New Forms Festival, the Polaris Music Prize, the Presentation House Gallery, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Vancouver International Film Festival held events at the Waldorf.
The city's top culture producers such as Black Mountain, Douglas Coupland, Rodney Graham, Grimes, Japandroids, Michael Turner, and Paul Wong headlined events there as well.
"On top of international entertainment programming, every weekend, the team was constantly working towards the next big event, such as Food Cart Festival and our legendary hotel-wide Halloween and New Year's Eve Parties," Fazio recalls. "We were always trying to out-do ourselves."
The Waldorf will be vacated on Sunday, January 20, 2013. The team says they are currently looking for a new space where they can continue to develop the arts and entertainment programming that the complex has become known for.
