{"id":22481,"date":"2018-12-12T16:34:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T21:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22481"},"modified":"2018-12-12T16:34:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T21:34:33","slug":"ground-officially-broken-on-holiday-inn-express-suites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/ground-officially-broken-on-holiday-inn-express-suites\/","title":{"rendered":"Ground officially broken on Holiday Inn Express & Suites"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

They may have wanted to seek shelter inside after huddling under a tent in the grey, fall chill on Wednesday afternoon, but Aurora\u2019s newest hotel won\u2019t be ready to welcome guests until early 2020.
\nBusiness representatives and dignitaries gathered on Eric T. Smith Way last week to formally break ground on Holiday Inn Express & Suites, the second of two hotel constructions now underway in Aurora.
\nOnce complete, the six-storey hotel will boast 110 rooms, 11 of which will be accessible, along with 14 extra large king suites. Amenities will include an indoor pool, board room, meeting rooms, a fitness centre, and two outdoor patios.
\n\u201cWe hope to be up and running in twelve to 13 months from now,\u201d Aldo Gottardo, President of property owner Gottardo Group of Companies, which is also developing an adjacent property for an office building, told The Auroran. \u201cAurora is really a fledgling area with a lot of new development.
\n\u201cWe have always wanted to be here [and] we have a lot of major clients here. Our whole thing is development and we saw an opportunity coming in here. We bought a nice site [near Highway 404] which I think started us off well. We want to be a resident here. We have never been here before building for ourselves, we have built for others, but this is a good opportunity to plant our roots here. Holiday Inn is obviously a great opportunity to start.\u201d
\nThe Holiday Inn Express & Suites Development is a development in conjunction with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). On hand for Wednesday\u2019s ground-breaking was IGH\u2019s Stuart Laurie who said the company operates 5,500 hotels around the world with 800,000 groups. 185 properties in their portfolio are in Canada, representing 25,000 rooms.
\n\u201cThis is not just another dot on the map,\u201d said Mr. Laurie, addressing the Gottardo Group. \u201cWe are honoured and excited to be your partner. You are the sponsors that are accepting the risk and you will be living the Holiday Inn Express brand every day. Congratulations and we look forward to the next one.\u201d
\nRepresentatives from the Gottardo Group on hand for the ceremony paid tribute to the outgoing Council, including former mayor Geoff Dawe, as well as the Town of Aurora\u2019s Economic Development Office, for helping make the Holiday Inn development a reality.
\nAddressing Mayor Tom Mrakas, who formally received the Chain of Office less than 24 hours before, they said he hoped he would \u201ccontinue to grow [the business community on Aurora\u2019s east side] more.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a very exciting opportunity,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cIt is an exciting opportunity due to the fact we\u2019re looking at becoming a premiere destination when it comes to sports tourism and this allows us to provide the opportunity [for people] to have a place to stay within our town. That is a very exciting opportunity for us and we\u2019re looking forward to not only the business and sports community, but for everyone to come here and learn and see the uniqueness of our town and be able to stay here within our town, shop, and create more business.\u201d
\nAdded Gottardo\u2019s Peter Duma: \u201cLet\u2019s hope we get a lot of the soccer and hockey teams and everything else on the weekends \u2013 and hope they don\u2019t beat up the hotel too bad!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They may have wanted to seek shelter inside after huddling under a tent in the grey, fall chill on Wednesday afternoon, but Aurora\u2019s newest hotel won\u2019t be ready to welcome guests until early 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22482,"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-22481","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\/2018\/12\/2018-12-13-13.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5QB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 23:31:40","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\/22481","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=22481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}