Sault builders bring Marriott hotel north.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Marriott Fairfield - Dynamic Hospitality

Apair of Sault entrepreneurs have brought the Marriott name to Northern Ontario with a new multi-million dollar hotel in Sudbury.

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Through their property management company, Dynamic Hospitality, business partners David Hornstein and Robert Higgins recently expanded their accommodations portfolio to three properties.

Their latest addition is Sudbury's new upscale Marriott Fairfield, the first new hotel built in that city in 20 years, and the first Marriott property north of the Muskokas.

Higgins, a well-known concrete contractor and home builder, handles the project management, while Hornstein, the company's president, works the operations side at their Lake Street office in the Sault.

Hornstein, a former restaurateur, knows the housing and accommodations business well.

His father Serge began Hornstein Developments in the early 1960's as owner and operator of apartment buildings for many years in the Sault.

After graduating from law school, David came home to work for his dad and later teamed up with Higgins in the mid to late 1980's on home building projects until the Sault's economy tanked in the early 1990's during an Algoma Steel restructuring period.

In searching for new opportunities, Hornstein discovered the city was in need of new hotel space while serving on a local tourism hospitality committee.

The provincial government in those days was helping build hotels in Northern Ontario through a financing program. Hornstein was able to access government money to build their first hotel, a Sleep Inn on Bay Street in the Sault in 1996, followed by another in Bracebridge in 2000.

It was on those long drives between Bracebridge and the Sault, and those frequent passes through Sudbury, that got him thinking about taking an active look in the Nickel City.

The city offered a diversified economy as a regional government service centre for northeastern Ontario with a growing medical and education sector, and a booming mineral industry sector.

He scoped out and secured a prime spot in 2004, a two-acre parcel of vacant land in New Sudbury near the bustling intersection of Barrydowne Road and The Kingsway in Sudbury's east end retail corridor. "Love the location, great exposure and visibility.

"It's a major hub, underserviced as far as the hotel product that was there, and easily accessible to the rest of the city."

Just to the east, the City is extending the Kingway's four-laning to better tie into the Highway 17-69 bypass.

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