By Greg Fry

Merritt mayor blasts BC Visitor Centre closure

Jan 17, 2018 | 10:10 AM

KAMLOOPS — Merritt Mayor Neil Menard has expressed his dissatisfaction with last week’s closure of the BC Visitor Centre at Exit 286, the interchange of Highway 97C and the Coquihalla Highway.

The centre, which provided visitor information for travellers for the past 16 years, closed its doors for the final time Friday.

Destination BC told CFJC Tuesday the centre had become “pretty much a de facto washroom stop” and that the request for information there was “not that significant.”

But those are arguments Menard vehemently disagrees with, noting the city had been fighting the looming closure for quite some time.

“We did everything we could — at least we thought we did everything we could — to try and have that remain open, to no avail. We had a couple of meetings at UBCM, we’ve talked to the minister since then with the new government, the old government, but unfortunately it’s a fait accompli, a done deal.”

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He says the move to consolidate visitor services at Baillie House, across from Merritt City Hall, simply won’t work in the long run.

“Baillie House has been a great place for us for tourists to stop in. It is not going to and can’t become the Tourist Information Centre like the one at (Exit) 286 but it will deal with some of it,” Menard says. “We’re working with Destination BC to come up with something, probably at Exit 290, hopefully in early spring in order to have something as a centre for information for tourists coming through.”

He says Baillie House has too many shortcomings to carry the load.

“They do a great job, they have a lot of people that go through there every year but we don’t have the parking in the area. We’ve got some parking but it’s not good enough. The place is run by volunteers, great people. I think we have one full-time person in there but it’s not designed to be the type of tourist information centre like 286 was.”

He also takes issue with Destination BC’s contention the old Visitor Centre had become a “de facto washroom stop.”

“The building was put up a number of years ago. It isn’t any different than any other situation where you have that kind of traffic going through and it grows as the year goes,” Menard says. “It needed renovations and washrooms were one of the things it needed quite badly and a septic system. It was a great place and it couldn’t have been better. To me that’s a poor excuse. To have spent a couple hundred thousand to retrofit that place would’ve been money well spent.”

He also estimates the closure cost at least a half a dozen jobs, which is also a blow to Merritt, noting “It affects our community and it affects those people and their families.”

That being said, Menard is hopeful a new, albeit smaller location, will be open at Exit 290 in time for the tourist season.

“We’ve been talking to Destination BC. We’re going to get $25,000 toward having something developed for tourists to go to in our community,” he says. “It might be temporary but we have to have something. We can’t have tourist information signs out on the highway and nowhere to go but Baillie House. We need something than can handle the traffic.”