A Hilton Garden Inn will replace the nearly demolished "V" Hotel on Highfield Street. (91.9 The Bend Photo)
Two major projects will benefit from a recently approved incentive grant to boost development in downtown Moncton.
A new $10-million dollar Hilton Garden Inn on Highfield Street and the $10.2 million Tannery Place apartment and retail complex on Vaughan Harvey Boulevard near Main Street both qualify.
City Councillor Paul Pellerin favours downtown development but he doesn’t think the grants are fair to taxpayers or other business owners in the city.
“In 2015, we moved forward with the biggest project the city has ever endeavoured (downtown centre). The whole premise of that was ‘build it and they will come’, it wasn’t ‘build it, they will come and then we will have to subsidize’,” noted Pellerin.
While it could be called a subsidy, City Councillor Greg Turner feels it will help spur construction especially for Tannery Place.
“The developers have been looking at this for a number of years but they were hesitant. This incentive is going to definitely help them to make their minds up to move forward today, right away,” said Turner.
City council unanimously approved the grants for both projects totalling about $1.5 million dollars.
Construction of the four-storey, 117 room Hilton Garden Inn to replace the nearly demolished “V” Hotel on Highfield Street will start next month and is expected to open in June 2020.
Work on the six-storey Tannery Place with luxury apartments and ground floor retail space, part of the larger Junction Urban Village development, is set to begin shortly with a target completion date in October 2020.
