Jimmy Bundschuh says many people have thanked him for revitalizing the west end of Baker St. by redeveloping the Savoy Hotel.
“Part of that is people’s memories from the building,” he told the Star. “It seems that every generation has their stories about the Savoy, going way back. There have been a lot of good times in there, and now we are doing that again.”
At the annual Chamber of Commerce business awards banquet on Thursday, presenter Barry Auliffe, awarding the Business of the Year award to the Savoy, said the building had become a “sad sack edifice” on the west end of Baker.
“And then in 2013 something special happened,” he said. “Jimmy Bundschuh and Jenna (Arpita) Shea, one of Nelson’s most intriguing and dynamic entrepreneurial couples, purchased the property, and the rest is history in the making.
“I think we all knew it was not going to be a renovate, update, reopen situation,” Auliffe said. “We all knew that something unique and eclectic was going to happen. I had a tour the other day: the Falls Music Lounge, the Bloom Nightclub, Farm Fresh Cafe, and still yet to happen is the hotel accommodation.”
Bundschuh said he wanted to base the configuration of the building on the past: nightclub in the basement, with a pub and restaurant on the main floor.
He was one of the founders of the Shambhala music festival and he and Arpita are at the centre of its operations today. He said the Savoy will allow him to present music all year round and to hire and keep good people.
“With a seasonal business it is difficult to retain excellent staff because you might not get them the next year.”
The hotel portion of the building, to be completed by the fall, will consist of 12 rooms.
“It will be a boutique hotel with a big common area and a patio on the roof for guests to hang out. We are trying to go for more of a ski lodge kind of feel more than a hotel, with lots of common space, trying to get groups coming here for the ski season who might rent out the whole floor.”
Arpita says she was surprised to get the award because the project isn’t finished yet, but “people are loving it, and the community is showing up to what we have created, and that feels really good.”
She said that in their photo (above) she and Bundschuh should be standing in the back, behind their staff, “because they are it. We are behind them supporting them. They (and other staff not in the photo) are the ones that have made the business what it is, because their excellence is what people experience when they walk in the door.”
Best Hospitality Business: The Adventure Hotel
The Adventure Hotel was run by Danny Rickaby until he died suddenly earlier this year.
Auliffe told the awards banquet audience that the hotel has been “constantly changing, never standing still, and a true reflection of Danny Rickaby’s spirit, and I have every confidence that the folks he has left behind will continue that.”
Earlier in the evening, businessman Vince deVito gave a moving and humourous tribute to Rickaby, including some reflections on the hotel.
“Now, Danny had his partners, but this was his hotel,” DeVito said. “This hotel is Danny Rickaby. From the transformation of the Lord Nelson Hotel to what you see today, this is Danny. Rooms, coffee shop, the Uptown Pub, Louie’s, the dining room and bakery for the coffee shop. The New Grand Wine Festival, one of the biggest social events of the year. This is Danny.”
Rob Little, the hotel’s general manager, told the Star the hotel’s success was a result of a workplace culture that Rickaby created.
Little is shown above on the left with, from left, Rhonda Comeau, Robbi LeBlanc, Becci Burden, and Kent Rode.
“We have a passionate team that has a lot of depth to it," Little said. "At the end of day, everyone’s job here is to make everyone else’s job easier and that puts the onus on everyone to bring their best every day. No single one of us going to be Danny Rickaby but collectively with the values he instilled, we want to make sure his legacy lives on.”
He said those values include being a good corporate citizen.
“For one business to succeed, another doesn’t have to fail,” Little said.
“One nice thing about the owners of this property is that they have given back as the employees have given back, so as the employees have worked harder to improve things on an operational level, the ownership has given the employees the tools to do that, in capital improvements mainly, and this has created an upward spiral at our facility.”
Retail Business of the Year: Georama Growers
Georama was started 47 years ago by George and Anna Grypma and is now run by two of their sons, Case and George Grypma, and Case’s wife Imelda. The three are pictured below, with Case Grypma on the left.
Introducing Georama at the awards evening, presenter Garry Kalinski pointed out that the company is at once a flower shop, a landscaping business, a greenhouse business, a garden centre, and a nursery. He said the business is both retail and wholesale because in addition to a retail store they sell to other greenhouses, garden centres and grocery stores throughout the region.
“We are a different type of business,” Case Grypma told the Star, “because 90 per cent of our cash is taken in the months of April and May, so it is like farming. And it takes a certain type of people (his 24 to 30 employees) that can go from zero to a hundred in a short period of time.”
He uses the word “family” to refer to his relatives, to his staff, and his customers.
“Every person here, down to the most junior, is serving the public in a fashion that brings our family ethics to the front: hard work, fair trade, living wage, career advancement, leave a legacy, be the best we can, build it one customer at a time. And the people have jumped on our bandwagon, we are part of their family.”
He said the business keeps changing over the years. Starting in the 1990s, marketing and branding became important. More recently, millennials buying houses and starting families has brought new changes. Those younger customers have done their research and want healthy, organic, environmentally appropriate products.
“They want to know where their food comes from. Nelson used to be self sufficient in fruits and vegetables, and a lot of them are yearning to relearn that.”
Professional and Community Service Excellence: Community First Health Services Co-op
Even though there are 17 health care and wellness businesses operating at the Community First Health Co-op’s Lake St. location, with about 75 people employed by them, the Co-op itself has no employees and is operated entirely by volunteers.
The co-op was started in 2002, following a restructuring of regional health care by the province that left some Nelson concerned citizens looking for alternatives.
“The businesses all have the shared focus,” presenter Garry Kalinski said, “of prevention, integrated care, chronic disease management, a combination of traditional medicine and alternative medicine, maternity care, affordable dental care, mental health, all these people working together with one goal, to provide an integrated team approach.
“Back in 2002, traditional medicine and alternative medicine didn’t talk to each other.”
Doug Stoddart, a director and past chair of the co-op, accepted the award from Chamber of Commerce director Karen Bennett (pictured at left).
He explained that over the years hundreds of volunteers have provided social capital to the organization. He is shown at left accepting the award from Chamber of Commerce director Karen Bennett.
“What is social capital? In one word, it is volunteers,” Stoddart said. “I have been in Nelson over the 25 years and I am amazed at how much social capital we have in this community.”
Stoddart said he studied cooperatives at the University of Bologna, Italy, and wrote a paper about the possibilities for co-ops in health care.
Then he came back to Nelson and was instrumental in applying his ideas to the beginnings of the Community First Health Co-op.