The Homeland Inn is going through a conversion that Philip Danyluk hopes will put an end once and for all to its reputation as a notorious crime spot.
By sometime this spring, the 1600 block Victoria Street property should once again be a motel, like it was when it was previously the Ranch Motel, catering to people working on job sites in and around Prince George on a temporary basis.
"Maintenance workers, loggers, road workers," Danyluk said Friday, adding it will be similar to a motel his Vancouver-based Living Options Real Estate Services operates in Quesnel.
The switch will put to an end a failed experiment to run the location as rental accommodation for low-income people that began when it was the Ranch and continued when a Lower Mainland investor group Danyluk heads bought the property in March 2011.
"We had a manager here that kind of went sideways," Danyluk said. "He started letting in people dealing with drugs and stuff like that. Once we caught onto that, we ended up getting rid of him."
Matters came to a head in early August, when Prince George RCMP brought in local media to highlight the ongoing trouble at the 1600 block Victoria Street property.
The Homeland was also on city bylaw enforcement's radar as the building fell into disrepair, exacerbated by a fire in September that gutted two suites.
In November, the city issued a letter of intent to suspend the business licence for that location until it was brought back up to an acceptable standard. It was to go into effect at the start of January but Danyluk responded by appealing the suspension and it's currently in abeyance while a date is set for a hearing before city council.
But that has not stopped Danyluk from taking steps to meet the city's standards. Danyluk said he launched the appeal because the city required him to immediately evict the tenants and he needed the cash flow to carry out the renovations.
After settling the insurance claim for the fire - a months long process - work has begun on renovating the two suites, while the rest have been going through a refurbishment as the old tenants, who were given two-month eviction notices, move out. A new management team has also been brought in.
The last of the tenants will have moved out by the end of March. Danyluk said he has been helping the better tenants find new places.
And while plenty of work remains to be done, the effort so far has paid dividends.
In the six months previous to the August showdown, the Homeland generated 79 files for the RCMP, mostly drug related, and in the three months following that point, another 69 were generated.
But since the start of November, the location is attached to just eight files. It's a trend in the right direction as far as Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass is concerned, and he hopes it stays that way. He attributed the trouble to absentee ownership.
"That's the thing in terms of property ownerships, if you don't live in the community and can't be there every day, you need to find reliable management that is in the community so that they can maintain it and keep the criminal element away as much as possible," Douglass said.
"That's certainly, I think, where the plan fell apart."
Danyluk also owns the London Hotel, which was extensively damaged in July by two fires in four days. The city also issued a business licence suspension for that location and it was not appealed.
