Montreal's Landmark Queen Elizabeth Hotel to Close for $140 Million Facelift

Montreal's largest hotel, the landmark 982-room Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth downtown, will close next June for an extensive $140 million refurb. Owner Ivanhoé Cambridge expects the property to reopen by June 2017, with the balance of the work projected to end by December 2017. As part of the colossal facelift, the home of John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's "Give Peace a Chance" bed-in—not to mention the bygone, august Beaver Club restaurant—will add "a set of bars and restaurants and a unique, impressive urban market."

"We have to do everything we can to participate in the vitality of our downtown," chief executive Daniel Fournier told the Gazette. "It’s our economic, social and cultural engine." Now if only Ivanhoé Cambridge would act to restore the iconic Eaton's Ninth Floor Restaurant as well.