The new owner of Jilly’s wants to turn the building into a hotel and restaurant

The new owner of Jilly’s wants to turn the building into a hotel and restaurant

(Image: courtesy of the city)

Good news for anyone who guessed that the buyer of the building at Queen and Broadview that used to house Jilly’s strip club would try to renovate it into a Drake-style hotel and restaurant: you nailed it. A site-plan application filed with the city by the 123-year-old building’s new owner, Streetcar Developments, proposes gutting the interior and putting in a four-storey rear addition. The result would be a completely revitalized building with six interior floors, instead of the four it currently has. It would have a ground-floor restaurant and café, five storeys of hotel suites (including an “executive suite” in the structure’s turret) and a rooftop terrace.

Most of the existing exterior would be preserved. Some of the rear addition would be visible from the street, though it’s not clear from existing drawings exactly what the new facade would look like. The design, by ERA Architects, also calls for a lot of badly needed exterior renovations, including the installation of new windows and the restoration of the historic building’s cornices and parapets. There would be a total of 57 hotel rooms inside. The restaurant and hotel entrances would face Broadview.

An architect’s drawing of the way the renovated building would look to someone standing on Broadview is above, and the entire site-plan application is available on the city’s website. The design is only a proposal, and it would need city approval and a lot more fleshing out before Streetcar Developments could start building.