Can't afford a home? Buy this historic Midway hotel
This two-storey historic hotel on the main drag of Midway is for sale for $250,000, far less than the cost of single-family homes in other areas of the province.
The Midway Hotel was built in 1900 and was last owned by Midway resident Monica Philip Shalay who purchased it in 2010 and ran it as a bar and restaurant until 2018.
“It was an important part of Midway and treeplanters and tourists would stay there,” she said. “We met people from all over, lots of bikers and people coming to visit their parents. Local men who grew up together would shoot pool on Sunday nights.”
She and her husband redid the walls, put in new flooring and renovated the bathrooms and kitchen, while doing what they could to keep its historical look.
She said way back in the day, Highway 3 went by the hotel but bypasses went through sometime in the 70s that took away a lot of traffic from the business. The building was difficult to keep up due to its age and the winters were tough for lack of customers.
“The hotel got sold to a foreigner,” she said. “It never went back to a hotel after we closed it and it’s no longer functioning as a restaurant and bar.”
The property features 3,000 square feet of bar and restaurant space, six hotel rooms and an owner’s suite, according to a listing by Colliers International. It’s located across from a main riverfront park and municipal campground at 607 Fifth Avenue.
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The hotel was the first hotel built in Midway and today is known by some locals as the Midway Hot-L because the “e” on its sign fell off.
Shalay said the building currently looks more run down than the photo shown in the ad.
Typical single-family houses in Kamloops sold for $635,400 in April while the average sale price for single-family houses in the Central Okanagan were marked at $1,083,027. Single-family houses in the South Okanagan cost $732,851 and those in the North Okanagan cost $831,090.
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Midway is located 51 kilometres east of Osoyoos on Highway 3 in the West Kootenay region of south central BC, and has a rich history of forestry, railroads, mining and ranching. It is located on the Kettle River at mile zero of the popular Kettle Valley Rail Trail.
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