No permanent home in sight for Yellowknife visitors' centre

The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre will be the home of the Yellowknife visitor's centre for at least the summer, if the board that runs the visitors centre agrees to it.

The future of the current building which is slowlysinking into a swamp remains up in the air.An engineering study deemed the current visitors centre unsafe. It was closed to the public a week ago.

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Wally Schumann, the N.W.T.'s minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, says the building's futurewill be decided by several government departments. The building may even be salvageable, he said.

"[The department of] infrastructure will probably step in to see if there's anything that can be done with that building, if there's a possibility of saving it, changing the way it's operated, or taking the back half off it," Schumann said.

"Those are steps to be looked at, but our short term concern is getting that centre up and running."

Schumann says the government has offered the Northern Frontier Visitor's Centre space at the museum for free, as well as help moving there and storing any goods and equipment until a permanent home is found.

Scaled down operation

The president of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre Association says the board that runs the centre will be making a decision, possibly as early as Tuesday, on whether it will accept the government's offer of the museum space.

The board will also be deciding whether to continue running visitor's centre services, he said.

If the offer of the museum space is accepted, it would be a very scaled down operation. Before shutting its doors, the centre sold souvenirs, and featured multimedia displays and exhibits displaying the animals of the N.W.T.

In the museum, it would be one desk with one employee handing out pamphlets and advice to visitors.

In addition to revenues from souvenir sales and rented office space in the old building, the visitors centre receives $161,000 in annual operational funding from the territorial government, and another $90,000 from the City of Yellowknife.

The city has offered an additional $17,000 in funding to help the centre transition to a new home.

The number of visitors using the centre increased almost 400 per cent in the last 10 years. Much of that increase has been among tourists visiting during winter to view the northern lights, but the summer remains the city's busiest tourism season.

The territorial government provides funding to visitors centres throughout the territory, including Fort Simpson, Inuvik,the N.W.T./Alta. border, as well asDawson City, Yukon all of which are seasonal operations. Yellowknife is the only centre that operates year-round.