A Canalta Hotel will be coming to Athabasca as part of the Landing Park Development.
A development permit for the hotel – along with a John Deere dealership – was approved last Tuesday by the Town of Athabasca.
“We've been evaluating Athabasca for two or three years and we've had that site actually in mind,” said Brooke Christianson from Canalta Hotels. “We recently came to an agreement with the owners to buy a piece of land to develop a hotel on.”
The hotel will have 82 rooms and a pool with a waterslide. There are also plans to include a meeting facility that will hold around 50 people.
“We're going to try to start construction this fall,” he continued. “It'll take about a year to finish it – 10 months to a year — (and) we plan to open in probably September of 2016.”
The hotel company is also planning on possibly opening some restaurants in the same area, but can’t release that information yet.
Construction on the development started earlier this summer, with contractors working for the landowners, Deerland Equipment, stripping the soil and working on creating a subdivision.
“We bought the land back in the 2013 timeframe with the idea that we're looking for land for our John Deere dealership, and there was no land that we could buy in town that was suitable,” said Brett Yakimetz from Deerland in a June interview.
“We had lots of interest from other individuals wanting to purchase land from us on the highway there. So, we decided to go ahead with the development.”
None of the other business names have been released.
