Nav Centre gets new owners

REAL ESTATE

Gatineau-based Devcore redevelops Cornwall’s Nav Centre

AGatineau real estate firm is investing up to $1 billion over the next decade on a new hotel and thousands of residential units at the site of Cornwall’s main convention centre.

Devcore said earlier this year it has finalized a deal to purchase the Nav Centre, a 630,000-square-foot conference, hotel and training facility overlooking the St. Lawrence River in Cornwall, from Nav Canada. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Nav Canada remains the primary tenant of the complex – which has been renamed the Dev Hotel and Conference Centre – as part of a lease-back agreement with Devcore. Earlier this year, Nav Canada – a privately owned, not-for-profit corporation that oversees Canada’s air traffic control system – said it was selling the 43-year-old facility after taking a closer look at its investments to “assess their viability and revenue potential.”

Devcore president Jean-Pierre Poulin said he sees massive untapped potential at the 75-acre Nav Centre site, which drew about 35,000 visitors annually before the pandemic.

Poulin said his long-term plan for the property includes as many as 2,000 residential units, a new 150-room hotel and a botanical garden.

“All the cool stuff that we wanted to do … on LeBreton, we’re going to do it here in Cornwall,” he said.

While the complex was once Nav Canada’s primary training facility, the agency decentralized its operations about 15 years ago and began focusing more on turning the building into a meeting and convention hub.

The facility currently includes a 535-room hotel and about 70,000 square feet of meeting space, making it one of the province’s largest convention centres with on-site guest accommodations.

According to its website, the property also features amenities such as a gym, sauna and double gymnasium as well as outdoor tennis, volleyball, baseball and soccer facilities.

In addition to expanding the overall operation, Devcore plans to revamp the existing facilities.

Poulin said the firm hopes to convert some hotel suites into student apartments and forge partnerships with post-secondary institutions such as St. Lawrence College and Ottawa’s La Cité that would see the colleges offer courses at the Dev Centre.

Devcore’s boss said he hopes to turn the site into “the smartest and most sustainable village in the world.”

The facility is also under new management. Atlific Hotels, which currently oversees operations at 40 lodgings across the country, will now take on the same role at the Dev Centre, replacing Nav Canada and French hospitality company Sodexo as the facility’s manager.

Poulin said he expects the entire project to take up to 10 years to complete. Devcore hopes to break ground on the first phase of the development – which would include the hotel, student housing and other elements such as a beach on the St. Lawrence – by the end of next year pending city hall’s approval.

‘A rocket ship’:

How the perfect combination of carbon fibre and batteries is creating a better boat

BY HEDDY SOROUR

news@obj.ca

If you wanted to build a revolutionary “Tesla of the water,” where would you set up shop? Montreal? Toronto? Merrickville?

For business partners Cam Heaps and Tim Markou, the sleepy village of Merrickville on the shores of the Rideau River was just the place to put their dream into motion. The duo bought the former Aylings Marina, perfectly located on the river, close to important suppliers and near the U.S. border.

And it’s there that they’re building their new manufacturing operation, Voltari Electric Boats, with the intent of revolutionizing the boating industry.

Using carbon fibre for the body of the boat and an electric motor with seven battery packs, the two men have created a vessel that’s designed to be fast, silent, nonpolluting and nearly maintenance-free.

“Our passion is not just to make an electric boat, it’s to make a better boat and, in doing so, to cleanse the waterways of the world and restore tranquility to our beautiful waters,” Heaps told EOBJ.

The electric speed boats are equipped with a 160kWh lithium-ion battery pack system capable of speeds of approximately 110 kilometres per hour. Carefully engineered for the marine industry, the high-output system is water-cooled and backed by a 10-year warranty. The price tag of $397,000 is steep, but no expense has been spared on this luxurious water ride.

“Merrickville is our final assembly and testing facility and we put everything together here,” explained Heaps. “We have our upholstery shop downstairs and we add in the (Rockford-Fosgate) stereo system, the wiring and all the 12-volt stuff.”

Not wasting any time, Heaps and Markou have built and tested a prototype. According to the two men, they are ready to take orders and start production of the Voltari Electric Boat.

Not surprisingly, local officials are pretty keen on the venture, too.

“It’s exciting for Merrickville with its historic industrial base and shows that we’re well placed for this type of niche industry to thrive and open other possibilities for unique environmental industries,” said Merrickville-Wolford Mayor Doug Struthers.

The Voltari prototype had its first launch at Ivy Lea, near the Thousand Islands Bridge. The City of Kingston agreed to install an EV charging station at Confederation Basin in anticipation of the first Voltari boats.

The carbon fibre body of the boats is manufactured at Competition Composites Inc. (CCI), a fibreglass and carbon fibre fabrication service in Arnprior. The hull, the top deck, the consul, the swim platform and the T-top of the boats are all fabricated in Arnprior before being trucked down to Merrickville, where they meet up with the motor and batteries designed and manufactured by LTS Marine in Montreal.

At the Merrickville boat yard, the components are fitted together with the addition of the Garmin-powered “brains” and a touch screen. Finally, the boat is outfitted with a hand-crafted custom interior finish and upholstery.

Right now, Heaps and Markou are building one boat at a time as they clear and renovate their new boat yard. Then, they’ll ramp up production and expect to hire up to 200 employees locally over the next five years.

The venture began with Heaps, who started Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto in 1998. By 2008, Heaps, a boating enthusiast, and a friend saw an opportunity to purchase high-end boats in Miami for very little money. At about the same time, they came across carbon fibre.

Meanwhile, Markou, an executive manager in the tech sector, heard about Heaps’ efforts to use carbon fibre and electric motors for marine applications.

“So I thought, wow, look at what Tesla has done on land. If we could do a Tesla of the water, how great would that be? But you can’t just grab those systems and put them in marine, for the same reason I can’t just grab the motor out of my Volkswagen and just drop it into a boat,” said Markou.

The Voltari boats, built entirely out of carbon fibre, are light – a 26-foot boat weighs about 1,100 pounds. That means they can fit seven 440-pound batteries into one boat and get both speed and range.

Besides their profile, speed and absolute silence, the Voltari boats have no fluids in their systems, so there’s nothing to discharge into the water. Plus, they’re virtually maintenance-free.

“If you think of a cordless power drill, people just chuck them in the shed and, whether you use it every day or once a year, you just plug it in and use it. It’s the same with these boats,” said Markou.

TOURISM

Le Boat changes tack and taps into whole new base of Canadian consumers

BY HEDDY SOROUR

news@obj.ca

The owners of Le Boat didn’t just pivot during COVID-19, they managed a full pirouette.

The luxury canal houseboat purveyor, one of the largest in Europe, responded to the pandemic in a way that not only preserved but also expanded its market while much of the travel and tourism industry floundered.

A global company based in France, Le Boat launched its Canadian operations in 2018 out of Smiths Falls, offering a variety of cruises on the Rideau Canal where travellers rent a houseboat and captain it themselves.

Because its operations in Europe were affected by the global pandemic before COVID reached North American shores, Le Boat had already experienced the disruptions and knew that the product was ideally suited to pandemic restrictions.

“We did a lot to try to drive awareness that Le Boat is in your own backyard and that this is a very safe type of holiday where you could literally explore Ontario’s great outdoors from a luxury perspective,” explains Lisa McLean, marketing manager with Le Boat.

“That was one of the keys for our type of product. We’re not a group tour, we’re not at a campground with other people, you’re floating on your own cottage and in your own social bubble.”

So, just as the pandemic reached Canadian shores, Le Boat was already soliciting coverage from mainstream media outlets that could reach a high-end market of Canadian consumers wishing to explore different aspects of the Rideau Canal.

“Le Boat is a great example of a business that pivoted their marketing efforts to capture a new demographic of customers during COVID,” says Julia Crowder, manager of economic development in Smiths Falls. “I also believe that by offering shorter vacations — three days instead of their usual seven days — it put the vacation into a price point and timeframe which was more appealing to the domestic market.”

Le Boat targeted its marketing geographically in Canada, McLean explains. “When I plotted where our customers came from, I could see that the clusters were all around (Hwy.) 401, so we really targeted our marketing to people living along the 401 corridor, all the way from Windsor to Quebec and within anywhere from a one- to five-hour drive time.”

DOUBLING DOWN

Given the turbulence caused by the pandemic, the company doubled-down on efforts to build confidence in the Le Boat brand in both customers and staff, including a full refund policy during the pandemic and now a flight cancellation guarantee.

“So, if your flight is delayed by two days, we’ll hold your boat for you and we’ll only bill you for the days you’re on the boat or give you a refund,” says Mclean. “One of the things I’m proud of is that Le Boat didn’t lay off staff. They did everything possible to make sure all our staff still had jobs. They were even quick to refinance to keep the money flowing through the travel industry. I was probably one of 10 of my friends that still had a job during COVID.”

As a marketing strategy, it was a complete about face for Le Boat, which, when it first set up shop in Smiths Falls in 2018, had focused its marketing almost exclusively on its existing 18,000 customers from Europe, the U.S., Australia and South Africa.

The company, which marked 50 years in business in 2019, can be traced back to English entrepreneur Michael Streat, who in 1969 founded Blue Line with eight boats. Le Boat today is a combination of three companies: Crown Blue Line (originally Blue Line), Connoisseur, and Emerald Star in Ireland. It offers houseboat rentals that cruise the waterways in France, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Germany, as well as in Canada.

In the company’s first two years of operations pre-COVID in Smiths Falls, 60 per cent of bookings were from Europe, 30 per cent from the U.S., and 10 per cent from Canada, according to McLean. Most were from past Le Boat customers interested in seeing more of Canada by boat, especially since the Rideau Canal is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The change in tack brought about by the pandemic did not go unnoticed by local municipal officials.

“Their pivot brought new tourists from the region, who discovered not only Smiths Falls, but also all the towns along the Rideau Canal,” comments Crowder. “The town is working with Le Boat to help expand their fleet and provide more opportunities for both domestic and international visitors.”

As a result, Le Boat is expanding not only on the Rideau, but potentially beyond.

“We now have 30 boats and because demand from the domestic market has been so strong, we are getting four additional boats next year, so we’re exceeding our original business plan of only 32 boats on the Rideau,” says McLean. “We’ll have 34 boats on the canal in 2023 and we’re currently looking for a second base somewhere along the canal – hopefully in Ottawa.”

But growth has not been all smooth sailing. “With the demands of COVID, boat sales in Canada are actually up 20 to 25 per cent so it looks like people from Ontario turned to boating during COVID and a lot of people bought their own boats, so dockage space is actually a challenge,” says Mclean.