There's a tunnel.
The Alexander Spa Hotel going up at 300 Spring Creek Drive in Canmore will connect underground to The Malcolm Hotel next door, letting guests move between both properties without stepping outside. In a town where January runs to minus 25, that's a design decision with a purpose.
It opens in early 2027.
What's being built
Forty-five guest rooms across 3.5 storeys, wood frame over a ground floor concrete structure and an underground parkade.
Adults only. The spa runs more than 13,000 square feet across indoor and outdoor space. Executive suites and the wellness facility occupy the main level, with guest rooms above.
The building is heated with geothermal energy.
Guest rooms and the pool and hot tub area face Spring Creek, with large windows and walkout patios or balconies. Rooms and treatment rooms facing Spring Creek Drive get smaller windows on the lower levels, for privacy from the street.
The underground parkade holds service space, covered vehicle and bicycle parking, and the tunnel.
What it looks like
Metafor is the architect, and the design borrows from Canmore's railway past rather than the alpine lodge template.
Asymmetric gable roofs. Angled walls clad in natural rundle stone, the grey local rock you see across the valley. The rest is corten steel, dark metal panel, stucco and timber.
Corten is the steel that rusts on purpose, forming a stable orange-brown skin that then stops corroding. Against rundle stone it reads industrial rather than resort, which is the point.
About that name
Canmore is named after Malcolm III, King of Scots, known in Gaelic as Ceann Mór. Big head.
The man who gave the town that name was David Alexander Smith, a railway executive who also named Banff after Banffshire in Scotland.
Frank Kernick's first hotel at Spring Creek is The Malcolm. His second is The Alexander.
Kernick has said what he was after. "I love the history of Canmore and calling it the Malcolm is a great thing," he said when The Malcolm broke ground. "To have that Scottish heritage, the heritage of the railway and Canmore's history included in Spring Creek, I think is a real special thing."
Spring Creek hasn't publicly confirmed the second name follows the same thread. The architects describe the building as paying homage to Canmore's humble beginnings as a railway town.
The land was a dairy farm, then a highway camp, then a trailer park
The 70 acres The Alexander is going up on have been in the Kernick family since the 1920s.
Frank Kernick's grandparents ran it as a dairy farm, supplying milk to what was then a coal mining town. In the 1950s it became a camp housing workers building the Trans-Canada Highway. After that it operated as Restwell, a mobile home park and campground.
Kernick bought the land from his father and uncle in 2002. He unveiled the Spring Creek plan in 2004, had a redevelopment plan approved in 2006, and started building just before the 2008 recession.
He grew up on the property.
Residents of the mobile home park that occupied part of the site were given the option to buy into Spring Creek through Canmore's Perpetual Affordable Housing Options, which is worth noting in a town where housing is the defining local issue.
The Alexander is hotel number two of three
The Malcolm opened in November 2018 with 124 rooms, a $37-million project and the first high-end hotel and conference space to open in Canmore in about two decades.
The Alexander is the second. A third, Kernick Place Hotel, is planned.
At full build-out, Spring Creek is designed for roughly 1,000 residential units, three hotels totalling more than 200 rooms, and about 25,000 square feet of commercial space, on 70 acres bordered by two spring-fed creeks, a short walk from Main Street.
Approvals and cost
Canmore's planning commission approved the project unanimously on June 19, 2024, granting three variances under the town's land use bylaw.
"I think the requested variances aren't significant," public commission member Brian Talbot said. "They won't have a detrimental impact on the community at large."
Alberta's Major Projects database lists the development at roughly 45,000 square feet with an estimated cost above $12 million, a figure entered before construction and not updated since.
Travel Alberta says it supported the project through its Tourism Investment Program after a business case showed growth potential, providing development support and network connections to accelerate it.
Why a spa, and why now
Alberta has a goal of doubling visitor spending by 2035, and the hard part is winter.
Canmore fills in July. It doesn't fill in February, and a spa hotel is one of the few things that gives someone a reason to drive out when there's no hiking and they don't ski.
The Alexander is expected to host wellness retreats, Indigenous learning experiences and corporate events alongside regular guests, and is projected to create more than 100 full-time jobs.
What isn't known
No rates. No booking date. No opening date beyond early 2027.
The suite count has been reported as both 44 and 45 depending on the source, and the $12-million estimate predates construction.
The hotel's site is live at alexanderhotel.ca, which is presumably where booking opens first.
Sources
The Alexander Hotel
Alexander Hotel Spa project profile — Metafor
Alexander Spa Hotel — Alberta Major Projects
The Development Story — Spring Creek
Travel Alberta, Tourism Investment Program
Canmore Planning Commission, June 19, 2024
Kernick's 2016 comments and Malcolm Hotel details as reported by the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
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