By the fall, Jasper will offer a new place for backpackers to lay their heads: the Jasper Downtown Hostel.
Located at 400 Patricia St., on the corner of Pyramid Lake Road, the long vacant house next to Everything But will soon be transformed into a brand new overnight accommodation.
The property was recently purchased by a group of local business owners and friends, who took possession on June 22.
Guy Boisvert is part of the group. He came up with the idea for a downtown hostel a number of years ago while he was travelling in South America.
“To our surprise we realized hostels are quite nice, actually. It doesn’t mean you have to be 40 people in one room.
“Most of the hostels we stayed in were in town; they were close to everything—we thought it was amazing. Here in Jasper you have to go seven or eight kilometres [to get to a hostel], you need a car, and we thought, you know what, it would be awesome to have something like that in Jasper, where people can get off the train and just walk to the hostel.”
“The idea is to provide a budget option,” said Johanne Roy, who is also in the group. “We have three floors, so we’ll have three different styles. On one floor they’ll share more bathrooms and then on another there will be less people per bathroom and then some are going to have private bathrooms.”
The plan is to offer between 30 and 35 beds and to have one staff accommodation unit.
“We’re going to start renovating as soon as we get the permit,” said Roy, who owns the interior design company, Ambiance Design Studio. “We want to do something fun with it, something cool and local. We want to play with the theme of Jasper.
“I can’t tell you more than that right now,” she said with a grin.
Roy appeared before the Planning and Development Advisory Committee (PDAC) in May asking permission to open the hostel. The house is zoned C1, which permits commercial accommodations as a discretionary use.
Following the meeting, the committee gave a positive recommendation and the superintendent approved the request.
Everything has been moving quickly since then. The group has appeared before the committee a second time to request a variance on the number of required parking stalls on the site, it has taken possession of the house and begun site plans.
“There’s no time to waste here,” said Roy, noting that the hope is the hostel will be open by the early fall.
Currently Jasper has two main hostels: the Jasper International Hostel, halfway up Whistlers Mountain, and the Maligne Canyon International Hostel, located above the canyon. There is also one located in town, at 106 Patricia St. The World Travellers’ Fraternity Guesthouse offers a six-bed dorm room and one double-bed suite.
Nicole Veerman
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