Willow Inn Business License Suspended
Prince George, B.C. – It was a full day of discussion with legal representation, but in the end, Council for the City of Prince George has voted to suspend the business license that would have allowed the Willow Inn on Victoria to operate over the next year.
In a special meeting of Council today, those Councillors who attended ( Garth Frizzell, Albert Koehler, Lyn Hall, Dave Wilbur, Cameron Stolz and Mayor Shari Green) voted unanimously to:
“suspend the business license number 74621 of Homeland Holdings Inc with respect to the property at 1656 Victoria Street in Prince George, for a 12 month period from June1st, 2014 to May 31st 2015 with the following conditions:
- Tenants or residents at Willow Inn will be provided with notice of termination of tenancy by April 30th 2014, for a May 31st 2014 departure.
- No units will be rented out between June 1st 2014 to November 1st 2014 ( 6 months) or from June 1st 2014 to May 31st 2015 (12 months)
- Homeland Holdings Inc will provide a performance bond in the amount of $10,000.00 to the City which will be returnable if compliance has been met to the City’s satisfaction, or forfeited if compliance has not been satisfied by the applicable deadline
- Compliance will be satisfied pursuant to the terms, conditions and assurances outlined in a letter dated April 14th, 2014 from Ian Kinman, and an email dated December 18th, 2013 from Guy Gusdal in the materials, and pursuant to a final inspection by City Staff.”
Philip Danyluk is the owner and operator of what is now known as the Willow Inn, at Victoria and 17th Avenue in Prince George. It has had other names in the past, it was called the “Homeland Inn” and before that it was the Ranch Motel.
It is a spot that is well known to police, as RCMP Inspector Brad Anderson advised Council the former “Ranch Motel” had 68 calls for service during 2012, from police, fire and city bylaw officers.
Danyluk told Council he realized there was a problem in July of 2013, and started issuing eviction notices to have people removed from the motel. There are still five rooms occupied, and he is pulling $500 a month from each one.
While he says he would not disagree that the place has had many issues, Danyluk says he has been trying to fix all that. Although he initially denied ever having a business license suspended before, he later admitted that was not the case, although he didn’t specify which property he owns was the subject of that suspension.
Danyluk also owns the London Hotel on 3rd Avenue, and maintains an office at 1205 – 3rd Avenue which is home to the White Goose Bistro. He operates the Willow Inn in Quesnel, 5 properties outside of B.C., and a company called “Livingoptions.ca” which offers real estate services under which he manages properties for other people or other companies.
He is not a resident of Prince George, although he says he spends a lot of time in Prince George. His home is in Burnaby.
Comments
Long overdue. Well done!
Posted by: Grizzly1 on April 24 2014 8:14 PM
Long overdue. Well done!
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The problem still exists; all they’ve done is move it from one location to another. We need to start treating the disease not just the symptoms.
With the Winter Games coming in 20l5 It would be nice to see a nice new complex of some kind sitting on this spot, maybe take in the vacant lot next door , maybe the owners of the properties can work together to make something spectacular. The Connaught Inn also needs looked into as it is falling into disrepair.
PG has gone through atrophy in recent decades. Large stores displaced the smaller stores, and large expensive houses dominated the new housing stock with very little for quality middle income and low income housing renewal. PG has become a breading ground for slum lord potential with a plentiful supply of 40+ year old wood structure housing comprising the vast majority of the housing options.
PG housing renewal rates are not self sustaining and haven’t been for two decades. this lack of renewal is a huge leading indicator of the trend in the quality of the overall real estate. Sure we see significant increase from time to time in year over year starts, but these are from a base that is no where near self sustaining renewal rates for a city this size.
PG is not a city that attracts quality housing developments because it has debt risk uncertainty tied to property taxes and has all the financial eggs in the resource industry basket with very little on the quality of environment for livability considerations, thereby handicapping the city from an ability to attract people to stay long term in PG, much less buy into developing quality projects in the city. So the city stumbles through atrophy in stories like the Ranch Hotel, the VLA in general, and the downtown shopping locations.
PG needs to have investors that can come to town and leverage their land into quality projects through evident future progress in the area. Instead more than not PG investors are circling from above looking for cheep deals they can leverage to harvest for some easy revenue. Cheep properties in PG they probably tell each other?
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