Canada’s largest privately owned hotel group is to make its UK debut in Newcastle.
Vancouver-based Northland Properties has bought the 65,000 sq ft former HQ of brewer Scottish & Newcastle for redevelopment as a 169-bedroom, four-star hotel.
It has paid Liverpool-based developer Downing around £8m for the vacant property.
Northland will submit plans imminently to transform the brewery – sited adjacent to Downing’s 600,000 sq ft mixed-use Downing Plaza scheme – into a hotel. Located in the Gallowgate area of Newcastle city centre, the property will be run under Northland’s Sandman Signature brand and is set to open in 2011.
Mitch Gaglardi, director of Sandman Hotel Group UK, said: “We are in the unique position to be expanding, and Gallowgate provides us with an ideal site in a viable marketplace.”
Downing’s deal with Northland is a further boost for its £200m Downing Plaza development, following a 100,000 sq ft prelet to Newcastle University Business School last February. French hotel group Accor is also finalising an agreement with the developer to operate a 283-bedroom hotel in the scheme.
The Sandman Hotel Group operates 35 properties across Canada and has seven hotel projects under construction.
daniel.cunningham@rbi.co.uk
