THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay’s newest hotel will cater to visitors staying in the city for more than a day or two, its owner says. The six-storey, 90-room Home2 Hilton will be located directly beside the existing Hampton Inn on Arthur Street West – another Hilton product under the same ownership.
Owner Mario Figliomeni said he was pleased after Thunder Bay city council approved zoning by-law amendments to allow the project to go forward Monday night. Leaving the meeting, he said the hotel will cater to an untapped market.
“There’s no long-term stay facility at the airport, and there’s a demand for it,” he said. “Hilton came to us and said, we feel we should fill this demand.”
Figliomeni estimates the Home2 is a $15 million dollar project. He hopes to have shovels in the ground by June, and expects construction to take around a year. Once completed, the hotel will feature suites with kitchenettes and other amenities for those on longer visits.
Council approved a number of zoning changes to allow a development with greater density and reduced parking on the property. That included raising the maximum building height from 12 to 21.7 metres, and reducing the required number of parking spots per hotel room from 1 to 0.57. The changes were necessary to meet Ministry of Transportation setback standards from the intersection of Highway 11/17 and Arthur Street.
Councillors questioned whether that amount of parking would be sufficient. Coun. Brian Hamilton said parking can already be an issue when events are held at the Valhalla Inn, adjacent to the new hotel. City administration said traffic and parking studies performed by an engineer assured them the proposal met city standards. The city’s approval also came with a condition that the owner develop an overflow lot at 790 Arthur Street West, a former gas bar.
City planner Grant Mason said the reductions fit with the city’s long-term plans to reduce the amount of land occupied by parking and encourage alternate forms of transportation.
“Parking consumes massive amounts of area – it spreads everything out, it’s bad for storm water management,” he told councillors. “It essentially leads to a low-efficiency urban fabric where people can drive everywhere, but then we don’t have enough development to sustain the cost of that system. So in the grand scheme, we need to reduce the amount of parking we have in the city to encourage densities to increase, to encourage people to take transit, walk, and bike.”
The project is one indication that Thunder Bay’s hotel boom shows no signs of stopping. It will be the seventh hotel located along a roughly one-kilometre stretch of Arthur Street West near the airport, and one of several new hotel builds in the city in recent years.
