Brewster Travel Canada is planning a major redevelopment and renovation of the upper terminal at its sightseeing gondola on Banff’s Sulphur Mountain.
The proposal includes completely redoing the interior of the upper terminal of the Banff Gondola, including washrooms, gift shops and restaurants, plus adding meeting room space at the mountaintop facility.
It also includes a massive 9,731-square-foot rooftop observation deck with 360 degree views of the Bow Valley – which includes a 3,079-sq.-ft. pavilion in which to host citizenship ceremonies – to replace the existing 2,000-sq.-ft. observation deck.
Brewster officials say one of the goals is to improve the overall experience for visitors of the Banff Gondola, one of the most popular commercial tourist attractions in Banff National Park.
“There’s no footprint expansion, but there is a requirement to structurally address the age of the building, predominantly the washrooms and kitchen facility,” said Dave McKenna, the newly-appointed president of Brewster.
“We want to gut it and start from scratch. There’s a variety of code issues and we want to bring it to a more modern standard. It will be a lot newer and shinier and more modern in the conveniences we provide our guests.”
Parks Canada officials had no comment on the development proposal at this stage, other than to say Brewster’s proposal is in the early stages of development review and environmental impact analysis.
“The material will be made available for public review as per Parks Canada’s usual processes,” said Dave McDonough, superintendent of Banff National Park, in an emailed statement.
Brewster, which is owned by U.S.-based Viad Corp., has owned and operated the sightseeing gondola on Sulphur Mountain since 1999. The gondola first opened in 1959 and was the first gondola in Canada.
An eight-minute gondola ride whisks visitors to the summit of Sulphur Mountain, where the present upper terminal offers visitors restaurant options, a gift shop and rooftop observation area. There are other viewing platforms and boardwalks.
McKenna said the Canadian citizenship pavilion on the rooftop observation deck will be actively promoted as a place where immigrants can have their citizenship ceremony.
“The idea is there’s a number of people who become Canadian citizens in Banff National Park and it’s an incredibly emotional and magical moment for those people… I think we can forever connect people to this place,” he said.
“We are proposing to document all of the new Canadians in the pavilion and record that. There’s nothing more impressively Canadian than 360 degree views of this valley. Short of drinking beer, watching hockey and eating maple syrup, there’s nothing more Canadian.”
If Parks Canada gives approval, McKenna said they hope to start renovations after the Thanksgiving holiday this year and have the majority of the project complete by the May long weekend in 2015.
“As you can imagine, any time you have construction on top of a mountain it is extremely challenging. We are working on pre-feasibility and with various construction firms to understand what it would take to do this project,” he said.
“Everything has to go up the gondola or get flown by helicopter to the top of the mountain. This is going to be a very expensive project for us.”
Brewster sparked controversy over construction of a glass-floored observation deck overlooking Sunwapta Valley in Jasper National Park. Parks Canada, which gave the project the green light, received unprecedented opposition to the project. It officially opened on May 1.
The first teahouse on the summit of Sulphur Mountain opened in the summer of 1940 on the site of the present summit complex. It was built and operated by mountain guide and visionary John Jaeggi, who immigrated to Banff from Switzerland in 1924.
