Aurora's second hotel, Holiday Inn & Suites, opening in 2020

Hotel features 110 rooms, indoor pool, meeting rooms, fitness space, outdoor patios

Yorkregion.com
December 17, 2018
Teresa Latchford

Aurora will go from zero to two hotels in 2020 following years of effort to recruit hotel developers.

Representatives of Gottardo, InterContinetal Hotels Group, Chamberlain Architect Services Limited and town officials recently gathered on Eric T. Smith Way in Aurora to celebrate the ground-breaking of the town’s second hotel, Holiday Inn Express and Suites.

The six-storey hotel located just minutes from Hwy. 404 will feature 110 rooms, 11 accessible rooms, 14 extra-large king suites, an indoor pool, large board room, meeting rooms, fitness centre and two outdoor patios.

“It is an exciting opportunity due to the fact we’re looking at becoming a premiere destination when it comes to sports tourism,” Mayor Tom Mrakas said.

“That is a very exciting opportunity for us and we’re 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.”

While heavy machinery worked away installing servicing on the site in the background of the event, Gottardo’s Peter Dumo confirmed that if all goes well, the doors should be opening in the first quarter of 2020.

“The business community (in Aurora) is vibrant and growing,” he said. “We hope we can meet their needs on the weekdays and the sport teams on the weekends.”

This is the second ground-breaking of a hotel in Aurora, the first being Microtel Inn and Suites by Wyndham being erected on the north-west corner of Goulding Avenue and Eric T. Smith Way.

In Oct. 2017, MasterBUILT Hotels president Eric Watson announced the hotel featuring 108 rooms and suites, an indoor pool with waterslide, fitness centre and meeting and function space would open in Dec. 2018.

However, an early winter didn’t allow construction to get the head-start it needed to have the land prepared for spring building. Following that, it was discovered the soil at the back of the lot where the hotel’s foundation was to be laid was unstable.

The footprint of the building had to be shifted closer to the front of the property due to the unstable soil and due to the change, Watson had to have the site plan submitted to the Town of Aurora a second time for reconsideration.

The grand opening has been delayed until the summer of 2019 but the extra time has allowed the hotel design team to upgrade the exterior features and provide a more upscale design to the interior, according to Watson.

The Town of Aurora has been actively trying to attract a hotel since 2014 when the former Howard Johnson hotel on Yonge Street, which still sits vacant today, closed in 2014, according to town CAO Doug Nadorozny.

“That property is still in limbo,” he said of the former hotel. “It is up for sale but it is a difficult site to redevelop as we have found out once it went up for sale.”

While residents continue to voice their safety concerns about the vacant building, Nadorozny added the town is willing to work with any potential buyers of the property to get it redeveloped.

But bringing two hotels to Aurora has been a long-time commitment of the town since the former term of council identified it as a priority stating it would bring an economic benefit.

“We don’t have specific dollar amounts of the economic impact these hotels will have locally but it will support other businesses in town, create jobs and bring people to stay in town instead of taking their spending to neighbouring towns who have hotels,” he said.

As for partnering opportunities with the coming hotels, Nadorozny confirmed the town isn’t looking at any agreements for community programming but will be looking at assisting the hotels on the marketing front, specifically sport tourism marketing.

“We have identified this as a huge opportunity aligning with our sport tourism goals,” he said. “Selling our pitch will be much easier with two new hotels to accommodate those coming to our town.”

The addition of meeting and function space will give the town more opportunity to hold functions in town rather than going to another facility in another municipality as has been done previously.

One of the largest hurdles Aurora had to overcome was York Region’s development charge model as the high cost associated with building a hotel deterred developers. The town advocated, alongside neighbouring York municipalities, to have the region take a second look at the fee structure it used.

Their voices were heard and the region made changes that renewed the interest of hotel developers back to Aurora and across the region.