{"id":16413,"date":"2017-02-01T17:28:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T22:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16413"},"modified":"2017-02-09T13:44:30","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T18:44:30","slug":"new-hotel-hopes-to-break-ground-by-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-hotel-hopes-to-break-ground-by-april\/","title":{"rendered":"New hotel hopes to break ground by April"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aurora will have a hotel once again.
\nMasterBUILT Hotels announced Monday their decision to build their flagship Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham in Aurora.
\nSet to be their sixth location in Ontario, and the first within the GTA, the hotel will feature over 100 guest rooms and suites, a fitness centre, swimming pool and, of particular importance to the local business community, meeting room facilities.
\n\u201cWhen we first visited Aurora over a year ago, we knew right away that the Town would be the ideal location to launch the new urban design of Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham in Canada,\u201d said Eric Watson, Chief Operating Officer of MasterBUILT Hotels in a statement. \u201cAurora is a vibrant community with a great deal of growth and opportunity and we look forward to being part of it. The Town has been very accommodating and a pleasure to work with in getting the project started and we look forward to bringing much needed accommodations to the community.
\nAurora has been without a hotel since Howard Johnson\u2019s closed its doors over four years ago with the property owner having no intention of selling off or redeveloping the building.
\nThe community\u2019s lack of hotel has been an ongoing concern for the Town\u2019s business, sport, and cultural communities since that time.
\n\u201cWe are extremely pleased,\u201d says Mayor Geoff Dawe. \u201c[MasterBUILT Hotels] are very aggressive operators, so they want to be in the ground by April. We\u2019ll do whatever we can here to make that happen. They still have to come through here for site plan [approval] which is doable. I have seen some initial renderings and I think it looks pretty spiffy. That just has to go through Council. They have worked through what they need to do for the foundation permits and that kind of thing.\u201d
\nThe new hotel will be located on Don Hillock Drive, part of the business and employment lands on the east side of Leslie Street near Highway 404. The area is home to the headquarters of York Regional Police and Bulk Barn and, on the north side of Wellington Street, by State Farm Insurance.
\nA hotel has been a long-identified need continually brought up by these businesses and organizations, says Mayor Dawe, as they often bring employees, franchisees and others into Aurora for multiday meetings and training courses, leaving them to find accommodations in Newmarket and Richmond Hill.
\nThese have also been concerns long-echoed by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce.
\n\u201cWe are ecstatic and very excited at this opportunity,\u201d says Javed Khan, Chair of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. \u201cWe have been quite diligent in just keeping the conversation going and we are, collectively, very pleased.\u201d
\nMr. Khan says he particularly welcomes the meeting spaces the hotel will bring to Aurora for businesses to use, not to mention the off-shoot benefits in-town accommodations will mean to local restaurants, shops, and others.
\n\u201cContrary to what some people say, it was development charges,\u201d says Mayor Dawe on the major factor that led to Monday\u2019s announcement. \u201cWe met with the Chair and the CAO (of York Region) as well as their finance staff a couple of times at the end of last year, highlighting the very basic economic shifts.\u201d
\nLast year, Aurora passed a resolution asking the Region to drop hefty development charges when it comes to hotels as it was identified as being a key barrier to bringing new hotels to York.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t get as much in development charges this way, but the points I made on a number of occasions is I would rather make half of the development charges of a project that is built than 100 per cent on a project that isn\u2019t. It did take a while for the Region to come around, but they did finally agree to do that. \u201c
\nFor that, Mayor Dawe says he sends his thanks to Regional Chair Wayne Emmerson.
\nOn his part, Mr. Emmerson said the Region was \u201cpleased\u201d Aurora has been selected for a new Microtel, which will \u201cnot only create jobs for our residents, but it will offer visitors top notch, comfortable and friendly accommodations.\u201d
\nThe development will be processed by Aurora\u2019s Business Concierge program, which \u201coffers priority processing and service for qualifying non-residential development projects.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora will have a hotel once again.
\nMasterBUILT Hotels announced Monday their decision to build their flagship Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham in Aurora.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4gJ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 16:07:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}