At the height of the effort to close the Crowsnest Centre and find new spaces for its tenants late in 2008, council set a March 31 deadline for the last date it would guarantee bookings at the Crowsnest Centre.
If the move was, as some believed, an effort to cause the Centre to lose business from people afraid that the building might be closed down, that effort has not been a success.
According to Dawn Rigby, manager of the Centre, the facility is booked full for all but three weekends between now and the end of October. “I have bookings well into 2010,” says Rigby. “Well into December of 2010. Business must go on. Nothing has changed.”
A month has passed since council’s deadline for guaranteeing bookings came due, but Rigby says she has heard nothing from council or the municipality about it.

She says that things look very good for the rest of 2009 for the facility, with numerous weekend and mid-week bookings.
The Centre has been booked for 12 weddings over the next 10 months, for Elderhostel programs, for AnPass exchange students, for Christmas parties and scrapbooking retreats, for a Lions International convention, for a Sikh community retreat, for family reunions, for the Adult Education Personal Best program, and for many other events.
Rigby notes that approximately 70 percent of the Centre’s bookings through the rest of this year are from out of town organizations, some of which bring more than 200 people into the Pass.
“We’re bringing people in,” she says. “We’re going to be very busy again this summer, even though they tell me there’s a recession going on.”
... For the full story, see the May 5 issue of the Pass Herald.