By NICK STEWART
Fairmont Hotel, the first hotel built in Sudbury in 15 years, is leading a trend that other developers are quick to be a part of. Darko Vranich, president and CEO of the Burlington-based Vrancor Development Corporation, is currently in the process of spending nearly $30 million to build two Hilton-branded hotels in the city’s South End.
“We’ve taken a close look at the market, and we’ve done some great studies that show the city is growing strong enough and fast enough to make these kinds of developments attractive,” Vranich says.
Throughout 2007, Sudbury’s hotels featured an average occupancy rate of 68 per cent, placing the city higher than the provincial average of 62.8 per cent.
With construction currently ongoing, the Hampton Inn and Suites and Homewood Suites facilities are being built adjacent to one another on the same lot for a combined total of roughly180,000 square feet of space.
Work began in early November and is slated to run through until July 2008, at which point the two facilities are expected to be ready for business. At that stage, Vranich’s hospitality management firm, Vrancor Hospitality Corporation, are due to oversee operation of the two hotels. The two facilities are expected to employ a combined total of nearly 85 people, with 50 more jobs expected to run an affiliated restaurant.
Each will cater to a different segment of the market, Vranich says, representing the diverse state of the local economy.
The 121-room Hampton Inn and Suites is to be a corporate-style hotel, and will come complete with meeting spaces and a business centre. As more and more business travellers are targeting a healthy lifestyle, he says, it will also feature a full-fledged exercise room, a pool and spa.
Negotiations are still being hammered out to determine which chain or brand will take up residence in the 7,000-square-foot free-standing restaurant space.
Conversely, the Homewood Suites facility is being designed as a long-term stay facility, which Vranich says will likely come in handy as newcomers attempt to cope with the incredibly low rental vacancy rates seen throughout the city.
The 85-room hotel will offer regular home-styled amenities such as full kitchens in its studio, one- and two-bedroom suites.
Vrancor’s experience lies mainly in southern Ontario, having won a developer of the year award from the Hilton Hotels Corporation last year for its work in Burlington and Niagara-on-the-Lake.
This dual-pronged project represents the company’s second foray into Northern Ontario, having first set foot into the region last year with the completion of two other Hilton-branded hotels, a Holiday Inn Express and a Staybridge Suites in North Bay.
While he attempts to use local workers as much as possible, Vranich says the strength of the construction market in the North has left him scrambling to find regional help. This is considerable difference from the south, he says, where there is rarely any shortage of workers.
“We’d like to use Sudbury people, but they’re so busy that they simply just aren’t available,” Vranich says. “There’s just not enough free manpower.”
Even looking to the same contractors who helped build the North Bay hotels did little good, as steady increases in the industry business also found them too busy to take the job.
As a result, he’s been forced to make extensive use of southern Ontario contractors, drawing upon familiar resources from the Burlington and Toronto regions.
Vrancor isn’t the only company interested in hotel development, however, as other significant hotel projects in the city are currently underway.
A $4 million Motel 6 is on the books for the Kingsway, with 90 rooms being planned across four storeys. Another potential, unnamed hotel development is also being rumored for Long Lake Road.
All told, nearly 400 new rooms are expected to be built throughout Sudbury within the next year, bringing the total available rooms to nearly 1,700.
