Digging in for Delta: condos, hotel construction begins on Thunder Bay waterfront.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: DESIGN-BUILD

Construction work at Thunder Bay's Marina Park will continue unabated this winter as a next round of development begins.

Contractors were set to pour the foundations for a hotel and condo project in January at the Prince Arthur's Landing project at Marina Park. Delta Hotels and Resorts was chosen by the Resolve Group, the city's handpicked private sector developer, to operate the four-star hotel.

The forecasted completion date of both the hotel and two seven-storey condos is spring 2014. Kathy Ball, the City of Thunder Bay's operations coordinator for Marina Park, said the city insisted to the developers that the hotel and condos had to be built simultaneously.

Thunder Bay's booming meetings and conventions business means hotel occupancies are the second highest in Canada, and the city is in dire need of another full-service hotel. The 150-room hotel will offer 9,000 square feet of conference and meeting space and unobstructed harbour views.

Last spring, the city transferred 2.3 acres of property at Marina Park to the Resolve Group to make room for those buildings. The $690,000 deal should return about $1 million in property taxes annually to the city.

The deal included lease agreements for other parcels of city-owned waterfront land including the former CN train station, which could be incorporated into the hotel development, but nothing's official, said Ball.

More retail will be arriving with the construction of a commercial building which will be finished by summer 2014. As well, a new restaurant opened in early December in the Water Garden Pavilion.

"The number of people coming down and enjoying the park is incredible and now with the restaurant, there, will be more people enjoying the facility," said Ball. Prince Arthur's Landing is a $130-million public-privately funded development meant to connect the downtown with the Lake Superior shoreline, and exhibit the cultural and industrial past of the historic port.

Historical buildings like the former CN train station and Baggage Building are being refurbished for new uses, and new structures have been added.

The development has become a popular year-round mixed-use attraction with an arts centre, skating rink, summer splash pad and skateboard park.

The official ribbon-cutting marking the end of the first construction phase was last July, but the City of Thunder Bay has counted more than 60,000 heads at summer waterfront festivals last year, plus more...