New look coming for water tower: hotel, conference centre planned for Sudbury tower.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: DESIGN-BULID

When it comes to repurposing the Pearl Street water tower in downtown Sudbury, Jeff Perreault knows what it won't be: a restaurant. "I am not the restaurant guy," he laughed during an interview to discuss his plans for the 112-foot-tall behemoth, which was decommissioned in 1998.

Instead of taking a cue from the city of Lethbridge, Alta., which opened a trio of restaurants in its old water tower in the early 2000s, Perreault is mulling a different approach. The water tower will serve as a focal point for a conference centre and 125-room hotel, which Perreault hopes to see built within the next five years.

He envisions a large conference centre on the 2.5 acres of property overlooking the city, linking it to a downtown-built hotel via a bridge that will cross over Notre Dame Avenue. The hotel will have 16,000-square feet on each of five or six floors, with 25 rooms per floor, while the conference centre will have multi-level parking with 420 spaces.

"There's a definite market for it," Perreault said. "I've found probably five groups of hotel owners that are looking at setting up their franchise or having a hotel in operation in Sudbury They all want downtown."

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Perreault believes once the property is developed, it will attract the right business concept and the right tenant who will want to be in the water tower. Shared workspaces, a multi-purpose facility, executive offices or even the city's proposed casino are all possibilities he is entertaining.

After Sudbury's other, smaller downtown water tower was demolished last fall, advocates of the 56-year-old Pearl Street structure felt a new urgency to protect it. Perreault felt that same urgency when he returned to his hometown in 2006 after a five-year absence.

He was looking for space for advertising billboards when the water tower caught his eye. "I always loved the water tower as a kid," he said. "I thought, 'I wonder what's happening with that thing. Where's it going?"

As it turned out, its former owner, Cory Prouse, was looking to...