{"id":18742,"date":"2017-10-25T15:51:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T19:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18742"},"modified":"2017-11-01T18:37:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T22:37:50","slug":"hotel-breaks-ground-with-12-month-completion-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/hotel-breaks-ground-with-12-month-completion-target\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotel breaks ground with 12 month completion target"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

If rain is considered good luck, Aurora\u2019s incoming Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham will soon be a goldmine for investors and visitors alike.
\nDignitaries gathered under umbrellas Monday evening to formally break ground on the new hotel site, which will be constructed at 180 Goulding Avenue just south of Leslie and Wellington.
\nA partnership between Wyndham and MasterBUILT hotels, principles of the project have set a 12 month target to finish the 108 unit building which will be complete with an indoor pool and waterslide, fitness centre and conference facilities.
\n\u201cThis is our first hotel in the Greater Toronto Area, which is particularly exciting for us,\u201d said Eric Watson of MasterBUILT hotels at the groundbreaking. \u201c[The GTA] is the biggest and most important hotel market in the country. If you\u2019re not in Toronto, you\u2019re not in Canada \u2013 put that in the paper! \u2013 and the Town of Aurora is still the GTA as far as we\u2019re concerned and is a great spot.\u201d
\nMasterBUILT started looking at the possibility of bringing a hotel to Aurora as early as four years ago, said Mr. Watson, but back then the company encountered a stumbling block which was recently removed.
\n\u201cPeople approached us and said, \u2018You need to do a hotel in Aurora,\u2019 and we took a look at it,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe scour the country for opportunities to build new hotels and I took one look at the development costs and said, \u2018Thank you very much, we\u2019ll take a pass.\u2019 It was really through the efforts of the Town of Aurora, and ultimately through the Region with the incentives, obviously a positive shift in the marketplace as well, [and] the opportunity to purchase this land from the city which really provided the opportunity to be here today.\u201d
\nMayor Geoff Dawe, who took part in the groundbreaking along with Councillors John Abel, Harold Kim, Tom Mrakas, and Michael Thompson, was on the same page.
\nHe praised the efforts of Town Staff in identifying what were seen as exorbitant development charges (fees that are paid by incoming developers to a municipality to account for growth) as a significant problem in attracting new hotels to York Region. Council took the ball and ran with it, bringing that message to York Region, where change ultimately came about.
\n\u201c[Staff] first came to our Council in 2015 with a proposal for the Town to look at its development charges and then, as Eric mentioned, we managed to leverage that up to the region for the Region to do something with their development charges,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cThat kick-started a few hotel developments across the Region and I am quite pleased we were able to get that going.
\n\u201cMicrotel is not just the developer and operator of hotels; they are also a good community partner and I know over the last couple of years they have contributed extensively to the communities they work in and we do appreciate that. We\u2019re very much looking forward to not only having a hotel, which has been quite a while, but for the facilities you\u2019ll bring, the jobs you\u2019re going to create, and the ability for people to stay locally.\u201d
\nAdded Mr. Watson: \u201cCommunity is extraordinarily important to us. Hotels are a gathering place for the community. They are also a driver of economic activity and a hub. We\u2019re hoping to bring business back into Aurora with this hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If rain is considered good luck, Aurora\u2019s incoming Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham will soon be a goldmine for investors and visitors alike.
\nDignitaries gathered under umbrellas Monday evening to formally break ground on the new hotel site, which will be constructed at 180 Goulding Avenue just south of Leslie and Wellington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2017-10-26-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4Si","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 00:40:54","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\/18742","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=18742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}