Royal City residents will soon be able to dine in two prominent buildings in downtown New Westminster.

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New Westminster city council has directed staff to process rezoning, special development permit and liquor primary licence applications that will pave the way for the opening of a pub and restaurant in the 1898 Canadian Pacific Railway (formerly the Keg) building at 800 Columbia St. A Carlos O’Bryan’s restaurant will be located on the ground floor and a Kelly O’Bryan’s pub will operate on the upper floor.

“It’s what we dreamed about,” said Reg Henry, CEO of Kelly O’Bryan’s Neighbourhood Restaurants and Carlos O’Bryan’s Neighbourhood Pubs. “We are going to open next week for the restaurant. The pub won’t be open for probably a couple of weeks – we heard two or three weeks for Victoria to respond to what the city sent them.”

The company retained two local architectural firms – Pattison Architecture and Billiard Architecture Inc. – to work on the project in the historic building that’s located next to Hyack Square. He said workers have done an amazing job transforming the space.

“It’s open. It’s a lot brighter than it was. There is a long horseshoe bar as soon as you come in,” Henry said. “What we have done is all the mouldings on the ceilings, we put them up new but we duplicated how it was when they first built it. The corbels that are on the posts, we redid them and recreated them in exactly the same manner as what they were. The attention to detail is pretty awesome.”

Prior to starting renovations, Henry said the company expected to spend a couple million dollars renovating the building but has gone “way over that” with the project. He said the goal was to make sure the inside of the building was comparable to its exterior.

“This one is an iconic heritage building, so we wanted to do it justice and bring it back to life and really wow people when they come in,” he said.

The business, which will be owned and operated by Jennifer McCreath, is expected to open on Dec. 6.

“We just want to help to revitalize the downtown,” Henry said. “It’s an amazing area. It’s an amazing building. We want to make all the citizens proud that this building is a Kelly O’Bryans.”

Also set to open at the corner of Eighth and Columbia is Piva Modern Italian restaurant in Anvil Centre. It’s now taking reservations for next week on its website.

“Both of those establishments are planning on opening within the next week or so, in early December,” Mayor Jonathan Cote told the Record Wednesday. “I think it’s a really exciting time for downtown New Westminster. We have been working really hard over the last decade to revitalize Columbia Street in the downtown area. I think we are starting to see the retail start to connect with the vision of downtown New West and we are starting to see more retail like restaurants that serve the local population in the neighbourhood. We are pretty excited about that.”

Cote notes a third restaurant is also set to open in December in downtown New West, with the arrival of Ludica Pizzeria and Game Room on Carnarvon Street.

“The fact that all three of the restaurants are very different and will appeal to different demographics really shows how diverse our downtown has become,” Cote said. “From the city’s perspective, I think we are really excited about seeing these new restaurants come onto stream.”