Flipping a flophouse into a hip hotel
Queen West eyesore gets bohemian-style makeover
From the National Post (June 24, 2002)

Peer out through a grimy window of the Drake Hotel and you will see the denizens of Queen West performing what Jane Jacobs described as "an intricate sidewalk ballet."

Those unfamiliar with the earthy rhythms of Parkdale might be less charitable in their assessment, but Jeff Stober, who wants to covert the Drake into a boutique hotel and restaurant, is pleased to have front-row seats for this daily dance performance.

The Drake, located a few blocks east of Dufferin Street, is the urban doppelganger of the CNC Global head office at Bloor and Yonge, where Stober was CEO for nearly 20 years.

But Stober is anything but disappointed in the change of scenery. After selling off a controlling interest of the company he founded in the fall of 1998, at the height of the dot-com frenzy (he remains as chairman), he decided "it was time to explore some of my more spiritual and creative sides that don't always necessarily get addressed as a CEO."

Most dot-com lottery winners -- Stober is a youthful 42 in both appearance and outlook -- might be expected to putter with putting, take guitar lessons or learn to paint with watercolour. Anything, in fact, except try and repair an aging eyesore.

But after spending a few months in early 2000 trekking through India, Nepal and Thailand, Stober returned to Toronto with a desire to explore his love of architecture, interior design and food.

His dream became reality in October, 2001, when he purchased the Drake and created Flophousechic Investment Inc.

"What I was initially really taken by in this neighborhood is its absolute authenticity on so many levels," explains Stober, who lives in Forest Hill. "The intersection of artists and businesspeople and rich and poor and young and old and highbrow and underbelly all converging in one place at one time."

Stober hopes his new and improved Drake will further facilitate the aspirations of the neighborhood -- a cultural melting pot where art, music, food and health conjoin.

Stober lists a host of inspirations for the project, from Bobos In Paradise (in which author David Brooks describes the creation and evolution of the bourgeois bohemian) to the numerous galleries in the area. He is fond of describing Queen West as an "evolving" or "rediscovered" neighborhood, rather than invoke the dreaded "gentrification" spectre.

When the new Drake opens in the Spring of 2003 -- if all goes according to an ambitious schedule -- Stober hopes to provide the antidote to the sleek modernism of the late 1990s as exemplified by Wallpaper* magazine.

The backlash has already begun, according to Stober, and in the past year or two, "The $15 martini all-of-a-sudden gave way to the hottest dives in the city where you can get $2 beer."

Such eruptions of "cheap chic," as Stober is fond of calling it, reflects a desire for authenticity and "a magic conjured from the everyday."

To that end, expect spartan over spendthrift. "We see ourselves as the anti-Four Seasons," Stober notes with a pleased grin. "We think we're the first and only of a new breed of hotel which is $100 bucks a night.... We're not going to be talking about our 300-thread count linen and that sort of thing. But everything is going to be meticulous and clean and fashionable and hip."

The hotel is but one aspect of the Drake experience. Stober lists a group of seemingly disparate elements, including a "retro beatnik-inspired lounge," a juice bar, a music venue, a yoga studio and a restaurant he describes as "a sort of millennium Asian truck stop."

Stober has enlisted 3rd Uncle, the Toronto-based architectural design firm responsible for Fez Batik, Queen West fixture Gypsy Co-Op and hotspot-of-the-moment Shanghai Cowgirl.

He has also been a quick study in the nuances of the neighbourhood -- he attends both art openings and Queen West Business Association meetings. He even has a thick blue binder filled with photos of the neighbourhood along with magazine and newspaper clippings about other boutique hotels here and elsewhere.

His new neighbours seem cautiously optimistic. An open house held in early June allowed residents to view blueprints and meet Stober. Some have reservations about the project, but are pleased with Stober's desire for input, his approachability, and his sensitivity to the area.

Stober is aware of the dangers inherent in his urban renewal but hopes to avoid them. "My experience is that if you build businesses with the right foundation, the right infrastructure, if you know your community, and you do it, most importantly, for the right reasons, and profit is not the end-all be-all, number one raison d'etre, more often than not, it will end up working out."

Alternate Head and Subhead:

From Forest Hill to the Concrete Forest
A former CEO discovers his creative muse in the boho enclave of Queen West West

Stuff Removed

If there is a Queen West West final exam, Stober appears able and ready to ace it.