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Council to take on long-term lease for chamber

Council sealed the fate of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce this week with a cheque for $300,000 to cover a 69-year lease at their new village location.

Council sealed the fate of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce this week with a cheque for $300,000 to cover a 69-year lease at their new village location.

"We’re delighted with the support from the RMOW and the ability to get on with a very positive reception to the guests," said Brent Leigh, president of the chamber.

Under the arrangement the municipality will secure the lease for the visitor information centre and the chamber’s office space at the Gatehouse. This in turn will be subleased to the chamber, which must cover any maintenance costs and repairs and changes while occupying the space.

With only $200,000 in its war chest, the chamber was far short of securing the lease only a short month ago.

Rent in this prime village location next to the Blackcomb Lodge and the taxi and bus loops, is $400,000 for 69 years. The chamber has already made a down payment of $40,000 and will kick in another $60,000. The chamber is also responsible for another $100,000 in tenant improvements to the building over and above the cost of the lease.

Despite pitching for support from their traditional sponsorship partners, like American Express and Superpages, the chamber could only realize partial funding.

And so the organization appealed to the municipality for funding at the 11th hour, when all sponsorship opportunities failed to provide a viable financial deal to secure the rent at their new location.

"In a building of this quality to have this space for 70 years for $400,000 is a very good deal," said Leigh, standing in the unfinished visitor information centre this week.

He added the long-term lease deal was the least expensive option for the chamber, representing a savings of $10 per square foot on the monthly rental rate based on current calculations.

With the secured funding announced this week, chamber staff was busy moving out of their cramped Creekside trailer to their plush new two-floor location this week. Set to open on April 1, the new location is expected to increase visitor traffic two-fold. More than 120,000 visitors used the chamber’s information centres in 2000 but that number dropped considerably once construction began in Creekside.

"As much as we don’t feel nostalgic about leaving the trailer at Creekside, we had an absolutely wonderful landlord at that location for many years, not the least of which, we never issued one rent cheque to Intrawest!" said Leigh.

Even as the paint was drying on the walls, and as machines and fencing dotted the dirt pathway, two young women walked into the visitor information centre with a query during the chamber’s move.

"We haven’t got the sidewalk in and people are still looking for the information," said Leigh, after helping the women with their query.

The women were looking for the place to book a helicopter flight to the city through Helijet.

While the company will have a booking office in the building shortly, there were only metal bars pulled over the Helijet booking desk this week.

Whiski Jack Booking Activities and Premier Accommodations will also have desks on the ground floor and a coffee shop will most likely take up space along the back wall.

The chamber’s offices are on the second floor, complete with a large meeting room to conduct training sessions like Food Safety courses, St. John’s Ambulance and First Aid classes.

The chamber’s employment and member services are next to the training room. There is also a spa slated to open up on the second floor.

The third level of the building will contain dorm-style employee housing.

But it’s the large circular desk dominating the middle of the ground floor room that will be the hub of the visitor information centre.

"We’re just looking forward to welcoming everybody properly to the heart of Whistler," said Hailey Guille, supervisor of information services and administration at the chamber and who will be stationed at that front desk.

The Gatehouse visitor information centre is just one part of a long-term strategic welcome strategy currently being developed by area stakeholders like the RMOW, Tourism Whistler and the chamber of commerce.

One of the key parts of the strategy is having a centralized and highly visible visitor information office for guests arriving in the village. The Gatehouse will be the physical embodiment of that sense of arrival.

The welcome strategy has been designed to improve visitors’ arrival experience from the moment they get off the plane or cross the border until they get to the resort.

The study looks at having seamless transportation systems as well as the possibility of having an information centre at the southern end of Whistler, possibly at the parking lot of the Interpretative Forest in Function Junction.

The strategy is scheduled to come before council in April.

In addition to help with their lease, the chamber has also asked council for a big increase in its annual grant-in-aid funding this year. In previous years the chamber received $35,000 from the municipal grant-in-aid fund. This year it asked for $150,000.

Along with the announcement to take on the Gatehouse lease, the municipality will also increase the chamber’s grant-in-aid, but it will be less than the original request. Grants-in-aid will be announced at the April 7 council meeting.

At least five per cent of 7,036 electors can sign counter petition forms against the Gatehouse lease and sublease arrangements by 4:30 p.m. on May 8 to stop the municipality from going ahead with this deal to cover the $300,000 rent at the Gatehouse. The forms will be available at municipal hall on April 7.