The Transit Hotel

By: Ryan Krawchuk

If you lived in Edmonton for any small part of your life, especially if you lived in the north end of the city, you have heard about the Transit hotel. If you are over the agent of 40, you might even have some interesting stories to go with it; remember the gerbil races of the 90s?

The Transit hotel was built by Patrick Dwyer for $50,000 in 1908 (about 1.14 million 2020 dollars), opening its doors for the first time on September 11th. Strategically placed in the community of Packington (a community in the village of North Edmonton), for travellers between Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan on the corner of Norton Street (66th Street) and Fort Trail (Fort Road) and for its proximity to the J.Y. Griffin slaughterhouse, later renamed to Swift's Packing Plant. It was also located near the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway lines that came into Edmonton in 1909. The 40-room hotel included many modern conveniences including hot and cold running water (a first in North Edmonton), bathrooms on the top two floors, electric lighting, a telephone call system, and a barbershop in the basement. Rooms were $1.50 a night, with meals costing $0.25 and $0.35 for Sunday dinner. You could have even rented a room for the month for $30.00. They even had a Livery Stable.

In an article dated September 11, 2008, the Edmonton Journal wrote, “The hotel and the land that surrounds it have undergone many changes over the years. The hitching posts that surrounded the hotel are long gone, as are the packing plants and stockyards. Asphalt has replaced the dirt roads farmers once brought their pigs, sheep and cattle in on for slaughter. The Belvedere LRT station now sits on land where once there was a hatchery. Even the community known as Packingtown no longer exists. The area was incorporated as the Village of North Edmonton in 1910 and annexed by the city in 1912. Little remains of the hotel's original interior and exterior, although the current owners, Bob and Pauline Ruzycki, have spent a lot of time and money restoring the front facade to its original boom-town architecture, complete with a second-floor veranda, elaborate parapet and finialed roofline. The hotel was run down when they purchased it in December 1986.”

In June of 2017, due to disrepair and “unprecedented economic conditions”, the Transit Hotel was closed. This permanent closure was not to last long, as in early 2020, it was purchased by a new owner, David Egan and chef Ray Pritlove, who vowed to have it re-opened for business by the fall of 2020. Experiencing delays, due to Covid-19, the hotel remains closed, but renovations are continuing and it is expected that the hotel will reopen soon, branded as the “Transit Smokehouse & BBQ.”