Venture brings Trump tower to Vancouver

Donald Trump, the billionaire New York real estate investor, said he formed a partnership with Canadian and Malaysian developers to bring his brand of luxury lodging and residences to Vancouver.

The C$360 million (HK$2.7 billion) Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver will be the second Canadian hotel-and-condominium development to carry the name, joining a 65-storey tower in Toronto that opened last year, comprising 261 hotel rooms and 118 condominiums.

Planned for Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver and scheduled for completion in mid-2016, the 63-storey structure will have 147 hotel rooms and 218 condominiums, Trump said.

"We had another opportunity in Vancouver and this was the one we chose," Trump, chief executive of the closely held Trump Organisation, said at a press conference announcing his involvement in the project. "And believe me, I have no second thoughts about it. This is going to be special."

Holborn Group, based in Vancouver, and TA Global Group of Kuala Lumpur are building the Trump tower on a site originally slated for development under the Ritz-Carlton brand, Joo Kim Tiah, Holborn's chief executive, said at the press conference. That project, also involving Holborn, was cancelled in 2009 amid the global financial crisis.

Trump Organisation will manage the hotel and assist in the marketing of the condominiums.

It is unclear how the Vancouver tower and Trump brand will be received by potential condominium buyers, Michael Ferreira, a Vancouver-based real estate analyst at Urban Analytics, said.

"Vancouver doesn't strike you as a Trump kind of city - it's not a New York, it's not a Toronto - it's Lotus Land, the relaxed West Coast," he said on June 14. "We haven't historically liked to show off our wealth."

The tower will be the largest luxury residential development in Vancouver since before the financial crisis, Ferreira said.