Successful innkeeper beat the odds

A ribbon cutting ceremony marked the official opening of the renovated and rebranded Best Western Milton Inn on August 13.  Left to right, Milton councillor Brian Penman, Crystal and Troy Newman of Troy’s Restaurant, Milton mayor Gordon Krantz, Shamim’s mother Rohan Velji, Jordan and Nashrin Struk, and Ted Chudleigh, Halton MPP.  (Shamim is behind the mayor.)

By Bruce M. Gravel

Refugee. Poor. Female. Shamim Warren survived against those odds, and more, to become a prosperous inn-keeper.

Today, she owns and operates the Best Western  Milton Inn, in Milton just off Highway 401, to the west of Mississauga and Toronto. Yet her road to success was certainly not smooth.

In 1972, when she was just 20 years old, she and her then-husband and their 18 month-old daughter, Shelina, fled Uganda. The regime of its ruthless dictator, Idi Amin, was persecuting the Indian community and Shamim’s family were forced to leave, having all their possessions confiscated by the government.

The young family arrived at a refugee camp in Rome with the assistance of the United Nations, and were then transferred to Naples, living in former World War II camps. A delegation from the Lutheran Church in New York visited Naples to sponsor the immigration of some refugees to the United States. Her family made it into that group, arriving in Houston, Texas, where Lutheran Church members took individual refugees to where they were working. Shamim was hired as a mail clerk with a petroleum company.

She contacted the Canadian Consulate in Dallas, and travelled there for an interview as a potential immigrant. The government of Canada approved the entry of her and her family as stateless person refugees. Immediately upon arrival here, she contacted Immigration, to start the process to become Canadian citizens.

Life in Canada wasn’t easy. The young family settled in Midland, Ontario where she got work at the Motorola factory. Five months later, while pregnant with her second daughter, Nashrin, she was laid off.

Being suddenly unemployed could not have come at a worse time: she had already sponsored the immigration of the rest of her family (mother, sisters, brother) from England, where they had landed after fleeing Uganda.
 
“I did not want to collect welfare; I wanted to work,” says Shamim. So she and her sister went to Collingwood for jobs at a factory making seatbelts, from Monday to Thursday. She returned to her Midland home for the weekend. While working at her day job in  Collingwood, she  took a night job cleaning washrooms and floors at Blue Mountain Pottery. A few months later, she was laid off from the seatbelt factory.

The next several years saw jobs in Toronto with Scotiabank and Bank of Montreal.
In 1985, she started her career as an innkeeper. With her savings, and money gathered from her extended family, she bought the 26-unit Welcome Travellers Motel in Windsor. It had a restaurant and Shamim became the full-time chef while running the motel.

In 1988, she sold the motel at a good profit, and bought the 32-unit Walnut Grove Motel in Kingston.

1988 was quite a momentous year for Shamim. She divorced her husband. She also met Dave Warren,  long-time Canada Brokerlink property/casualty insurance broker serving the Ontario Accommodation Association, when he called at Walnut Grove to sell insurance.

Several years after purchasing the motel, after making renovations, she joined the Econolodge chain.

The Milton connection

In October, 1994, she moved to Milton and bought the Herigate Inn, which was in receivership. It had 71 rooms, a restaurant and an outdoor pool. It was a rundown place, so she promptly started an aggressive renovation program. Following the renovations, she changed the name to Quality Inn, joining that chain.

In the succeeding years, she demolished 10 rooms and built a new four storey addition, with 31 rooms. The property now has a total of 94 guest rooms in two towers, one five storey and one four storey. The hotel is owned by Armand-Shel Investments, a holding company which is 100 per cent owned by Shamim.

She also built a new conference centre attached to the hotel, capable of hosting 300 people. A new lobby was added, along with a fitness centre and an indoor salt water mineral swimming pool. The pool is 35 feet long, and is a lap pool and a current pool, where guests swim against a machine-generated current.

In 2002, she joined the Ramada Inn chain, after first gutting and rebuilding all the bathrooms throughout the property. In January, 2008, she quit Ramada because it was not performing to her expectations.
 
She signed on with Best Western, and the hotel was renamed the Best Western Milton Inn. This necessitated more renovations, in order to meet Best Western’s standards, including constructing a large carport over the front entrance.

On April 2, 2005, the Milton Chamber of Commerce presented her with its prestigious 2004 Business Person of the Year Award.

The Best Western Milton Inn has 17 full and part-time employees. Shamim’s daughter, Nashrin, is general manager. Nashrin’s husband, Jordan, an engineer, oversees construction projects at the hotel and was instrumental in building a Medical Centre. Carrie Cookson is  front desk manager, and  she has been with the hotel for 12
years. Zoraida Carn is head housekeeper. One of the housekeepers, Marina Fleury, has been with the property since before Shamim purchased it.

The bulk of the hotel’s business is corporate, and that is largely due to the efforts of Nashrin, who is a “super salesperson,” says Shamim proudly. Nashrin and her husband have given Shamim two lovely grandchildren: Aiden, now two and a half years-old, and Sara, 10 months.

The hotel has just reopened its restaurant, after completely gutting and renovating it. Named Troy’s Diner, it is leased to a successful Milton restaurateur, Troy Newman, who has a second restaurant in town. Featuring homemade food and fast service, the restaurant attracts many locals, especially for its Sunday Brunch, where line-ups to get in are common. Having a popular restaurant is great exposure, because it gets local residents out to the hotel, where they become familiar with it and then recommend it to family and friends as a great place to stay. Troy’s does all the catering for the hotel functions.

Strong faith plays a role

Shamim is a devout Ismaili Muslim, and these words of their religious leader, the Aga Khan, are especially apt considering the obstacles she overcame to become a successful businesswoman:

“Struggle is the meaning of Life. Defeat or Victory is in the hands of God, but Struggle itself is man’s Duty and should be his Joy.”

That quote, beneath a picture of the Aga Khan, is prominently displayed in her home.
The Aga Khan is very modern in his approach to the Ismaili religion, encouraging equality of the sexes, urging females to play a more dominant role, and advising families to educate their daughters. Not only has Shamim taken these tenets to heart with her own life, but she has also applied them to her daughters. Both daughters are university graduates and both have post-graduate degrees. Nashrin has a Masters in Tourism and Hospitality from Guelph University. Shelina has an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, and a Masters in Planning and Development from the University of Waterloo. Shelina works for the Canadian office of Giffels, an international design and construction company.

Shamim’s son, Ali, is a graduate of Humber College and works at the Marriott Residence Inn in London, Ontario, as front desk manager.

In October, 2006, after a long friendship, Shamim married Dave Warren, who coincidentally provided the insurance for all of her properties. As he says with a laugh: “Dave Warren, in order to get the business, will do anything, even marry the client!”
 
The Peterborough project

Despite her many accomplishments, Shamim shows no signs of slowing down. She is ready to construct a major development strategically located at the main entrance to Peterborough. In 2001, she started negotiations with the city to acquire 17 acres of land at the junction of Highway 115 and The Parkway. The acreage is wetlands, and no other developer responded to the city’s calls for interest. She was given the land, in return for agreeing to build a new Visitor Information Centre, to be given to the city rent-free for 10 years.

She will construct a major new hotel and convention centre on the property. The hotel will be five stories high, with 140 guest rooms, and the convention centre will handle 600 people. It will be the tallest hotel in Peterborough.

The Visitor Centre has already been constructed, and plans have just been finalized for a new Tim Hortons, over 3,000 square feet in size, making it the largest Timmys in Peterborough. All buildings must have a “Kawartha Cottage” look in their design, as required by the city.

But even this project has not been without its struggles. Because of the wetlands, and the small stream which borders it, Shamim has had to deal with years of regulations, tests, approvals, and more tests, from the Ministry of the Environment, the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority, the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and others. All this has cost her tens of thousands of dollars.

“It has been an exhausting headache,” she says with a sigh. “However, throughout, Peterborough city council has been very supportive. We have encountered many problems with the property that were never anticipated. But we are persevering!”
Construction on the hotel is planned for 2009, with the convention centre slated to be built in 2010.

Shamim is very appreciative of her new country, as she says: “Canada is a great country for immigrants. This is a country where people of diverse backgrounds and different cultures have succeeded in business and in living together. Canada is far more accepting of people from different cultures than any other country.”

Not only have she and her family benefitted from moving to Canada, but our country has also benefitted from the successful businesses Shamim has created:  the people employed, the taxes paid, the charities supported,  and especially, the travellers served.  And there is more to come.

Bruce Gravel is president of the Ontario Accommodation Association. This article originally appeared in the OAA’s Summer 2008 ACCOMMODATOR magazine.