The hotel is the realization of a vision for Exhibition Place that dates back 20 years, when the city decided something was needed to attract more events and visitors to the newly-opened Direct Energy Centre (now called the Enercare Centre) and later, the Beanfield Centre. In 2004, the city began accepting bids for a hotel. The prospect of developing a brand-new project on more than three hectares of prime downtown real estate appealed to Henry Kallan, president and owner of Library Hotel Collection, which also has properties in New York, Budapest and Prague.

“They gave us a parking lot, we built paradise,” jokes Thompson.

That parking lot also happened to be one of the oldest heritage sites in Toronto; a pre-construction archaeological dig turned up the foundations of former barracks for New Fort York, built in 1840 to replace the original. Those limestone walls have been preserved under a glass floor in Hotel X’s New Fort Hall, a combination museum and event space. And next spring, the former officer’s mess — the only standing remnant of the Stanley Barracks, as the site was renamed in 1893 — will open to the public as a nanobrewery on the hotel grounds.