Construction of a new hotel in St. Stephen is underway.
Amsterdam Inn & Suites, a Sussex-based family business, will be developing the much-needed accommodations.
“It’s overwhelming and positive. We’re just so thrilled,” Erica deWinter said.
deWinter said the hotel is expected to employ 50 to 60 people. It will be an 80-room hotel with a 90-seat restaurant and conference rooms.
She said the community response is what drew the deWinter family to St. Stephen.
“We’re progressive, we’re engaged, we’re working together,” she said. “The community response is really strong. It makes the project that much easier and positive for everybody.”
The company has five locations in Sussex, Moncton, Fredericton and Florenceville-Bristol. A fifth location in Grand Falls is under construction.
deWinter expects construction in St. Stephen to take about 14 to 16 months.
“We’re hoping that we can get open by the end of next summer,” she said. “But the timelines are hard to predict at this time because we’re still working on a few plans. We’re going as quickly as we can.”
Municipal District of St. Stephen (MDSS) Mayor Steve Backman said the hotel is a wonderful addition to the community.
“We really have to thank the previous council because they did the heavy lifting,” he said, speaking with The Courier.
He said the hotel creates opportunities for growth, including the town’s recent addition of the County Moose, a hockey team in the National Collegiate Development Conference.
“We want people to be here. We want to have every opportunity for that to stay,” he said.
He thanked the deWinters for having the confidence in St. Stephen to build the next chapter of their business.
Former mayor Allan MacEachern said he feels confident in this groundbreaking.
The property on 19 Budd Avenue has sat vacant since 2022, barring the concrete slab poured in initial stages of the build. A Best Western was intended to be built there, but according to the Telegraph-Journal, court documents showed at least seven companies had filed claims against developer Spur Line Properties. In November, a judge ordered the property into receivership.
“[I am] very emotional because this is real,” he said.
He said the hotel has been the linchpin in everything the municipality has been trying to work on. MacEachern noted opportunities that had been lost due to a lack of accommodations in the town.
“It’s connected to so many things,” MacEachern said.
One of the first things MacEachern did was call former town councillor Marg Harding, who asked for an update on the hotel’s progress at every meeting..
“We are finally answering that question because it has been a long time,” he said. “This is my third shovel turning on this. One in 2012, one with the (concrete) pad and here we are today, this one is real, folks.”
