THUNDER BAY - The Waterfront hotel will be going forward as expected.
Gisele McDonald, president of ReSolve Group made the confirmation during a Thursday morning news conference at the Allure condominium on Prince Arthur’s Landing.
That confirmation, however, came with the admission that construction would come with a slight delay on what developers called the “super structure.”
Those delays were mostly due to the Marriot’s purchase of the Delta brand.
"With the marriage of Delta and Marriott we made the choice to slow it down a little bit," McDonald said during the conference.
"We feel that Marriott has lots of experience to bring on board and we felt that it was important."
McDonald added that the amalgamation of the two companies will not change the completion date of the hotel. However, the construction of the super structure has been pushed back to September, but she guarantees that the hotel will be completed by the end of 2016.
The Delta Marriott team will be spending all of Thursday doing design work with ReSolve Group and the consultants to ensure that the hotel moves forward.
“We have a whole team of folks here from not only Canada but from other parts of the world,” said Paul Cahill, spokesman for Marriot and Delta hotels.
“We have people who really have an expertise in trying to add the most amount of value and move this process along. It’s pretty complicated to build a hotel and get all the pieces right.”
Developers and city officials also refuted rumours that the construction of the waterfront hotel is contingent on the approval of an event centre. That rumour has been an often talked about point among long-time opponents of the waterfront development project.
