Nanaimo Convention Centre: The VICC and Its Empty Hotel Lot

For fifteen years the most closely watched empty lot in Nanaimo was a level patch of 0.17 hectares at 100 Gordon Street. On one side stood the Port Theatre and the library; across the road, the Vancouver Island Conference Centre, which opened in 2008 on the understanding that a hotel would follow. The City of Nanaimo put it plainly in a 2019 news release: the conference centre project "was predicated on the inclusion of a Conference Centre Hotel." The hotel opened in March 2023. Everything that happened to the Nanaimo convention centre in between can be read as a story about that lot.

A $30-million question in November 2004

The vote came first. On Nov. 20, 2004, the city asked voters to approve borrowing up to $30 million toward building the centre, and the referendum passed with 52 per cent, the Nanaimo News Bulletin recalled in a 2026 look back. The argument had run since the referendum was announced early that year. Supporters, the city among them, said the building was central to reviving the downtown core. Opponents predicted a white elephant that would drain municipal money, burden taxpayers and disfigure the centre of the city.

Timeline. November 20, 2004: referendum to borrow up to $30 million passes with 52 per cent. 2008: centre opens, 38,000 square feet, cost $74 million as reported by CHEK News; first hotel development approved for 100 Gordon Street. 2013: second hotel approval, a 240-room plan with a 2014 ribbon-cutting and no completed foundation. December 7, 2015: council directs a request for proposals. June 2017: PEG Development chosen, lot sold for $750,000. February 2019: building permit for 172 rooms, first proposed at 112, construction value $21,425,576. January 29, 2020: ground-breaking. March 2023: Courtyard by Marriott opens after about three years of construction, budgeted at $23 million. Refunds of unspent budget: $292,000 after 2023 and $309,244 after 2024. November 2025 projections: operating loss about $878,000 for 2025 against a $986,000 budget, about $948,000 for 2026, falling to $927,000 by 2030. July 18 to August 29, 2026: Beyond Van Gogh exhibition. — **The conference centre and its hotel, 2004 to 2026** Fifteen years passed between the centre opening and the hotel it was planned around.Source: Nanaimo News Bulletin; CHEK News; City of Nanaimo; NanaimoNewsNOWOpen full size

The site moved before it settled. According to the Bulletin, the first plan put the centre on the waterfront at the old Malaspina Hotel, where the Pacifica condominiums went up between 2006 and 2009, but the family that owned the property never reached a deal with the city. Council then chose a block on Commercial Street and began expropriating buildings there so they could be demolished.

The 38,000-square-foot building opened in 2008. CHEK News reported in 2024 that it cost $74 million, and that the city has budgeted close to a million dollars a year for its operations ever since.

Two developers and a foundation that was never finished

The hotel was meant to give the centre what it lacked most: rooms close enough for delegates to walk. The city later said two hotel developments were approved for 100 Gordon Street, in 2008 and 2013, and that neither developer met the timelines in its development agreement.

The first was Millennium Nanaimo Properties, a Vancouver developer. Business in Vancouver reported in 2015 that the city had started legal proceedings to recover more than $3 million it was owed after Millennium's bid failed. The second was SSS Manhao International Tourism Group, a subsidiary of China's Suzhou Youth Travel Services. It held approval for a 240-room hotel and held a ribbon-cutting in 2014 to mark the start of construction, but it never completed the foundation. When council sought concessions, the company would not agree and withdrew. At that point, Business in Vancouver noted, the whole city had roughly 900 provincially approved hotel rooms.

Another hotel idea was moving at the same time, a 32-storey strata tower with 303 rooms to be managed by Hilton on the waterfront, on Front Street beside Georgia Park; it was approved and then shelved.

Council tries a competition, and a new operator

By late 2015 the lot had been empty for seven years. At a special closed meeting on Dec. 7, 2015, council directed staff to issue a request for proposals for the hotel site and to update the market studies for both the hotel and the centre. The city's release added a line that showed how far the debate had gone: council agreed "not to consider repurposing the VICC" until the studies and the proposal call were done. Mayor Bill McKay said council wanted "an open, transparent and competitive process to find a developer who can deliver this important project for Nanaimo."

The management of the building changed hands at about the same time. Atlific Hotels had run the centre under a service agreement that was due to expire on March 19, 2017, and in the fall of 2016 the city asked companies with experience running conference centres for expressions of interest. The Oak View Group took over that year; its division OVG360 still manages the building, which is owned by the city and also serves as the room where the public can watch council meet on Monday nights.

PEG Development and the 172-room Courtyard

The developer who finally built was PEG Development, a Utah company that council chose in June 2017. The city sold it the lot for $750,000. The first proposal was a six-storey Courtyard by Marriott with 112 rooms; after more market analysis the plans grew to nine storeys and 172 rooms. When the building permit was issued in February 2019, the city put the construction value at $21,425,576, not counting furnishings, and collected a $157,479 permit fee.

Crews arrived late in 2019, NanaimoNewsNOW later wrote, in time to keep the permit deadline from lapsing. At the ceremonial ground-breaking on Jan. 29, 2020, Bill Corsan, then the city's director of community development, said the hotel "has been a priority project for Council and staff for over 10 years." The city expected it to be finished in 2021. It took two more years.

By the time the occupancy permit came through at the end of February 2023, CHEK News reported, the hotel had been under construction for three years and had been budgeted at $23 million. Corsan, by then the city's corporate and business development director, now counted "over 15 years" of work. He also explained why it mattered: "one of the challenges is we don't have enough room nights in downtown Nanaimo to do larger conferences." The outer walls were made of prefabricated panels, 750 of them by NanaimoNewsNOW's count, and the hotel opened that March.

Ownership is the part that changed most from the original plan. Snuneymuxw First Nation describes the hotel as an economic partnership between Marriott and its Petroglyph Development Group and as majority-owned by Snuneymuxw. Erralyn Joseph, president of Petroglyph, told NanaimoNewsNOW the stake "reconnects us to this parcel of land and tells the story of who the Snuneymuxw people are." Chief Mike Wyse told CHEK the hotel sits in the heart of one of the nation's major village sites.

The subsidy, the refund and what each side counts

What the hotel changed is visible in the operator's reports to council. With the Courtyard open, general manager Chuck Loewen of the Oak View Group told CHEK in July 2024, there were 500 hotel rooms within a five-minute walk. He called 2023 the best financial year the centre had had. The operator returns any unspent part of the city's budget, and after 2023 it paid back $292,000.

After 2024 the refund was $309,244, NanaimoNewsNOW reported. Loewen told council the three most profitable categories, conferences, banquets and special events, had grown from $1.9 million a year to more than $2.4 million, while meetings fell by $36,000. He counted almost 29,000 delegate days and $11.275 million in economic impact from conventions and conferences alone, and some of the special events are not what the building was designed for: a cue sports championship that brings 600 people a day for seven days. Since 2017 the centre had tracked more than $57 million of economic impact against just under $7 million in city contributions. "I would certainly go out and borrow $6.7 million if I got a $57 million return on that," Loewen said.

Those are the operator's figures, and they measure something different from the city's cost. The economic impact is an estimate of spending in town; the operating loss is real money from the city budget. Mayor Leonard Krog took the second point head on in 2024: "No one expects to make money per se off the conference centre necessarily," he told CHEK, arguing that the businesses and jobs around it made it worthwhile.

There is also a quiet disagreement about revenue. CHEK reported that the Oak View Group pointed to parking, naming rights and lease money that go to the city and sit outside the centre's budget. In November 2025, Loewen told a city budget meeting that most convention centres have exactly those incomes and the VICC does not, which kept it from reaching "a black situation." Both can be true: the money exists, but it does not show up in the building's own accounts.

The 2025 projection Loewen presented at that meeting put gross revenue near $3.9 million and the net operating loss at about $878,000, below the budgeted $986,000, with hopes of finishing nearer $775,000. The 2026 budget projected a loss of about $948,000, matching the city's annual operating contribution, plus $100,000 in contingency for non-capital improvements. If you are reading the centre's budgets for yourself, the useful number is that loss line, which Loewen projected would fall each year to $927,000 by 2030.

A different referendum, and a different answer

The 2004 vote was not the last referendum on a large downtown venue. In March 2017 the city declared that 80.3 per cent of voters had rejected a bylaw to borrow up to $80 million for an events centre with an ice arena, on a record 23,885 ballots. The Navigator reported that some people believed many of the No votes were aimed at council members rather than at the Nanaimo events centre itself. A conference day in the centre's own parkade at 101 Gordon Street costs $7 for 12 hours on the city's downtown parking rate card.

Van Gogh on the second floor

The newest idea for the building is to fill it in the months when conferences do not come. At the November 2025 budget meeting, Loewen announced a six-week Van Gogh exhibit, signed two days earlier, in partnership with the Port Theatre, the Nanaimo Museum and Tourism Nanaimo. "It's very expensive, there's some risk involved," he said, forecasting 25,000 visitors and up to $5 million in economic impact. The partners' own estimate, reported by NanaimoNewsNOW in March 2026, went to $6 million for central Vancouver Island.

Beyond Van Gogh, paired with Beyond Monet, opened on July 18, 2026, and ran to Aug. 29 across nearly all of the second floor. David Warburton, artistic executive director of the Port Theatre, called it "the biggest thing that's ever happened in Nanaimo in terms of a large-scale event." Krog was blunter about the calendar: "This is not the season when you're attracting folks to the conference centre."

Loewen has said he wants another summer attraction every year, whether "Lego, whether it's Titanic, whether it's dinosaurs." No final attendance figure for the first one has been published in the coverage of the show.

Questions

What is the convention centre in Nanaimo called?

It is the Vancouver Island Conference Centre, usually shortened to VICC, at 101 Gordon Street downtown. The City of Nanaimo owns it, and OVG360, a division of the Oak View Group, manages and operates it.

When did the Vancouver Island Conference Centre open?

It opened in 2008, four years after a referendum in which 52 per cent of voters agreed the city could borrow up to $30 million toward building it. CHEK News has reported the 38,000-square-foot building cost $74 million.

Does the city still subsidize the conference centre?

Yes. The city budgets close to $1 million a year to cover the centre's operating loss, and the operator returns what it does not spend. For 2026 the budget projected a loss of about $948,000, plus a $100,000 city contingency for non-capital improvements.

How much has the operator refunded to the city?

The refund was $292,000 after 2023 and $309,244 after 2024, according to CHEK News and NanaimoNewsNOW. For 2025, the general manager projected a refund of about $200,000 when he presented the 2026 budget in November 2025.

Which hotel is next to the Vancouver Island Conference Centre?

The Courtyard by Marriott Nanaimo at 100 Gordon Street, directly across the road. It has 172 rooms on nine storeys, opened in March 2023 and is majority-owned by Snuneymuxw First Nation through a partnership with Marriott and the nation's Petroglyph Development Group.

Why did it take so long to build the conference centre hotel?

Two earlier developers won approval for the site, one in 2008 and one in 2013, and neither met the timelines in its agreement with the city. The city went to court to recover more than $3 million from the first, and the second withdrew in 2015 after failing to finish the foundation.

Are Nanaimo city council meetings held at the conference centre?

Yes. The city lists the VICC as the place where the public can attend council meetings on Monday nights, in addition to booking space there for conferences, trade shows and private events.

Was the Beyond Van Gogh exhibit at the conference centre?

Yes. Beyond Van Gogh, paired with Beyond Monet, ran at the VICC from July 18 to August 29, 2026, taking up nearly the whole second floor. Organizers expected about 25,000 visitors, but no final attendance count had been published in the sources consulted.

Is the conference centre the same as the proposed Nanaimo events centre?

No. The events centre was a separate proposal for an arena with an ice rink. In March 2017 the city declared that 80.3 per cent of voters had rejected borrowing up to $80 million to build it.