We had one Trump branded hotel in Canada, the “Trump International Hotel”, at the corner of Bay Street and Adelaide Street in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.

It’s now the St. Regis. Trump never owned any portion of the building, but it was his responsibility to sell the condo/hotel units and manage the hotel operations.

It was a disaster from the start. It was originally designed to be the tallest residential building in the city, but during the planning stage they figured the construction costs and the expected revenue from sales of units would not be compatible so they chopped off the top ten floors.

The Trump Organization planned to sell the units as “investments” but the Ontario Securities Commission was right on top of that and told them if they wanted to do that they had to get registered and put out a prospectus. They passed and started selling them as condos, but gave buyers a spiel that they could finance the very expensive purchase by adding their unit to the hotel pool and renting it out for about $500 a night average.

However, those figures were based on a 55% occupancy rate and the property never topped 35% occupancy. Unit holders were bleeding cash and many were ordinary working people and small business owners who simply couldn’t keep up the payments, so there were loads of defaults, then lawsuits.

Trump personally, and his co-defendants, were found liable for misrepresentation and breach of securities regulations.

The property was soon heavily in the red and couldn’t keep up the payments on its main mortgage. Eventually, the property was put up for auction and the lender picked it up for the exact amount remaining on the mortgage. The Trump Organization was dismissed as the property manager and it was re-named.

Now, it’s not the first hotel/condo project to run into trouble. 1 King West, a similar project where an old office building was converted, also ran into financial trouble when the city started taxing it at the hotel rate and not the condo rate. However, another project, the Shangri-La, about three blocks west, did fine.

One of the big problems with the complex is that although it’s right next to Toronto’s extensive PATH system, it isn’t connected to it.