One of the biggest investments in downtown North Bay is set to break ground after City Council unanimously approved its progress on Monday.
Council’s consent opens the door for a 100-room Homewood Suites hotel by Hilton and a stand-alone 200-seat restaurant and Starbucks coffee shop to be built at 495 Oak Street West.
The amendment to the zoning bylaw permits the $25-million development to include hotels and restaurants on the property and increase the maximum height of the building from three stories to six stories.
With the permits and paperwork approved, the intensive planning process is set to get underway and has the city and the developer brimming with anticipation.
“These projects are not easy to put together - it takes a lot of cooperation,” said Community Services chair Coun. Mark King. “We all know how important the development really is to the city.
“It does add to the overall downtown appeal,” he added. “My thought process is that we have to encourage that kind of development downtown.”
Just three days after the politicians’ blessing, the Vrancor Group development team has already launched their hectic construction schedule.
The plan is for the crew to work 12-hour days during the week and eight-hour days on the weekend in order to complete exterior construction and have the structures fully closed with windows in place so they can heat it inside and do all the interior work in the winter months.
Ultimately, if all goes well, the city and the development team have high hopes of having the project completed by Spring 2017.
“The intent is to have the building closed in by January 1, with a proposed opening at the end of February,” said King. “These guys, they don’t fool around - they know what they’re doing. I just can’t see anything negative in the way it’s developing.”
Under the city’s Official Plan, the property, which sits at the northernmost limit of the city’s Central Business District, would be limited to a height increase of just one-storey beyond the maximum three, so as to leave the views of Lake Nipissing unobstructed.
The height increase of the Suites was contested throughout the city’s Planning Advisory Committee process, but the developers’ design features the six-storey hotel to be tucked into the east side of the property, minimize the impact on surrounding properties.
“From my viewpoint, the way the whole thing unfolded from a time factor, it didn’t take that long for it to happen,” said King. “The fact that staff took the time to deal with it in a proper fashion really, in my mind, they bent over backwards to make it happen.
“There's a lot of hard work that’s done before council - if you’re able to clear all of the concerns that people have about the development prior to it coming to council, it makes it that much easier for council to vote on it,” he added.
The approval also calls for Oak Street to be widened by four metres, including the addition of a boulevard and sidewalk, as well as the construction of a new link of trail in front of Marina Point, tying the path together with the downtown core.
The hospitality property management and development company out of of Hamilton, Ont, is driving the project, among their 15 other hotels and 20 managed properties, including the Hampton Inn by Hilton on McKeown Avenue.
Developer Darko Vranich, the president of the Group, was named the 2013 Developer of the Year by the Hilton hotel chain for his Homewood Suites by Hilton projects in Hamilton, Timmins and North Bay.
But Paul Goodridge of Goodridge Planning and Surveying said the picturesque location of Vranich’s latest development means the developers are hoping to make it their “showpiece” property.
“The location of the hotel, in my mind, it couldn’t be a more prime location - just the view on the lake, the close proximity to the lake front and the dock,” King added. “I know in the future what it’s going to do: it’s going to be one of those places when people come to North Bay, they’re going to want to stay there.”
“From my own perspective, it’s rewarding. When some of these decisions come before council it gets pretty heated,” he concluded. “But there’s no question, in my mind, that I think everyone on council realized how important the development was to move forward.”
