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Pomp And Protests In Vancouver Tuesday For Grand Opening Of Trump Tower

File photo. The Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver opened for business earlier this month. The official grand opening speeches and ribbon-cutting take place Tuesday.
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File photo. The Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver opened for business earlier this month. The official grand opening speeches and ribbon-cutting take place Tuesday.

The grand opening of the newest Trump International Hotel and Tower is set for Tuesday in Vancouver, British Columbia. President Donald Trump's eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are the headliners for the official ribbon cutting and opening gala.

The 69-story, twisting glass tower in the heart of downtown is now the second tallest building on Canada's West Coast. It features 147 luxury hotel rooms and about 200 condominiums. The residential units sold out last year. The skyscraper, designed by the late Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, reportedly cost $360 million Canadian to build.

A wealthy Malaysian developer owns the building. Trump Hotels manages the property and licenses the Trump name for a fee, an arrangement that raises now-familiar questions about international entanglements and conflicts of interest for the U.S. president.

The Vancouver Trump Tower has become a magnet for protests. Elected city leaders unsuccessfully asked the project developer to dump the Trump brand saying it has no place in Vancouver.

At a lodging investment conference in California last month, the head of Trump Hotels said his division would shift its focus to growing domestically for the next four -- or eight -- years. CEO Eric Danziger mentioned Seattle, Dallas, Denver and San Francisco as cities under consideration for future hotel openings.

The Trump Hotels division has not provided any further details on expansion plans.

Copyright 2017 Northwest News Network

Correspondent Tom Banse is an Olympia-based reporter with more than three decades of experience covering Washington and Oregon state government, public policy, business and breaking news stories. Most of his career was spent with public radio's Northwest News Network, but now in semi-retirement his work is appearing on other outlets.
Tom Banse
Tom Banse covers national news, business, science, public policy, Olympic sports and human interest stories from across the Northwest. He reports from well known and out–of–the–way places in the region where important, amusing, touching, or outrageous events are unfolding. Tom's stories can be found online and heard on-air during "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" on NPR stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.