NIPAWIN — The Town of Nipawin will take over the visitor services, which helps tourists, from the Nipawin and District Chamber of Commerce.
“As they indicated, they felt like they were underfunded for the services,” said Rennie Harper, Nipawin’s mayor. “The Town of Nipawin has felt we haven’t necessarily got everything that we needed for data and information as far as visitor services goes.”
The Nipawin Chamber of Commerce has hosted visitor services since the late 1980s for the town. The town has been in discussions with the chamber for over a year about them taking it over.
“We’ve been saying in our strategic directions documents for the last three years that we believe that tourism would be better served under our umbrella. We would hire the students or the staff that would provide the services from May to September under the auspices of the Town of Nipawin as opposed to providing third-party funding.”
Due to municipal requirements, the town and the chamber will have to work from separate buildings.
“It was the chamber that gave the town several options in terms of the building itself. One is to purchase, one is to rent and one, the contrary option to that, is they can find another location,” said Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator.
The location of the visitor centre services has not been finalized yet.
“In the interim of the absence of that building being on the market or in our possession we’re looking at what our alternatives are,” Elliott said. “Whether we use an existing town facility on an interim basis to deliver the services or not.”
The chamber and the town are still in discussion as to what the visitor services will look like in the future.
“The communications that town and the chamber have had have been very positive, very cordial, very co-operative. And I think that’s important when one thinks about the relationship between the town and the chamber.”
Lisa Suchlandt, executive director for the chamber, said they will continue to focus on their members and spend more time advocating on behalf of them.
“The visitor’s centre, although it is sad we are losing it, it’s always good to have a little bit of change,” Suchlandt said. “We look forward to seeing what it’s going to look like in a couple of years.”
