[FALLSVIEW]

THIS WOULD BE A HUGE INVESTMENT!

$300M Resort Expansion Planned for Niagara Falls

August 14, 2006
By Dees Stribling, Special Correspondent


Grand Niagara Resort Inc., a partnership that owns and operates a new golf course in Niagara Falls, Ontario, is planning a C$300 million expansion of the facility. At its completion, scheduled for 2010, the 800-acre complex will include another golf course, a Hilton hotel, conference facility, time-share condos, homesites, a winery and a pair of manmade lakes.

"The biggest driver for the development is that the area is lacking a 12-month conference destination," Graham Cocking, director of sales and marketing for Grand Niagara, told CPN this afternoon. "Also, there's a tremendous demand for a full-service golf resort."

According to Cocking, the Grand Niagara development will be the first such full-service golf resort built in Ontario in the last two decades. The development will also benefit from the fact that Niagara Falls is already an established tourist--and more recently, meeting--destination, he noted.

The project is a joint venture between A.D. Sharp Development Co. and the Consulate Development Group, both of Mississauga, Ontario. The JV has been assembling land for the project along the Welland River for about seven years. Last year it opened the 18-hole Grand Niagara Golf Course, which was designed by renowned golf course architect Rees Jones Inc.

Investors in the first course included golfer Greg Norman, who will lend his name to the second 18-hole course. The Hilton will include 350 rooms and a 20,000-square-foot spa and recreation area, and there will be about 300 time-share units and 220 homesites.


__________________