The Drake Hotel is expanding to Prince Edward County

Jeff Stober, the hotelier behind the Drake, is planning on exporting his brand of Queen West cool to Prince Edward County. Stober recently bought the former Devonshire Inn (to be renamed the Drake Devonshire Inn) in the village of Wellington for $1.3 million, and he plans to turn it into a six-room boutique hotel with a “rough-luxe design palette,” a restaurant serving locally sourced ingredients and a deck overlooking the lake that he hopes will be as scene-y as the rooftop patio on Queen. Stober told the Globe and Mail that he envisions the hotel as a “camp for grown-ups” eager to leave the city on the weekend but still hang out someplace hip (he plans to offer cultural programming from local artists and musicians, plus an old-school games room). However, urban vacationers, oohing and ahhing over the region’s rustic charm, may get a cool reception from locals. Prince Edward County residents have historically shunned development, afraid of the area becoming resort-like (i.e., getting spoiled)—and that anti-outsider mentality has been partly responsible for hindering previous attempts at trendy development. Here we were thinking Lansdowne was gentrification’s next frontier. [Globe and Mail]