The owner of a Squamish company that recently started booking tours at the Squamish Adventure Centre says he hopes to help turn a big question mark in the minds of many local residents into a facility that will fulfill its original mandate - and of which the community can be proud.
"I guess the biggest thing for me is that everyone is always frustrated with the Adventure Centre, but this is a good-news story," Jeff Levine, owner of Sea to Sky Adventure Co., said last week.
"We opened up last week and you wouldn't believe the number of people who are saying, 'Omigod, thank God.' Galileo (Coffee Co.) is in here now, and we're having mothers coming in with the kids to get coffee and it's been really busy."
The publicly built and owned Adventure Centre has been widely criticized for cost overruns on the original construction and, more recently, for the fact that its operation is still being subsidized by taxpayers. In April, Squamish council nixed a request for a $41,000 increase in the size of the annual subsidy before approving a budget of $151,000 - the same as last year's.
At the time, mayor and council said they expect to see decisions made about the building's use in the coming months that will help reduce or eliminate the need for future taxpayer subsidies.
Cameron Chalmers, chair of the Squamish Sustainability Corp. (SSC), the district-run entity that operates the centre, on Tuesday (May 31) said Sea to Sky Adventure Co. recently became the third private company leasing space at the centre -Galileo Coffee and Landsea Tours and Adventures are the other two.
The Squamish Chamber of Commerce operates the Visitor Information Centre that's closest to the main entrance to the building. Tourism Squamish has a mandate to book tours out of the building, but for a variety of reasons, including funding, has decided to step out of that role for at least two years, Chalmers said.
Levine, whose company rents bicycles and runs guided biking and hiking tours, said he first approached the SSC board about 18 months ago when it was comprised of council members, asking about prospects for having his company book tours at the centre.
He re-established contact with the newly revamped board last fall, and a couple of months ago, the board decided - after Tourism Squamish had given its OK -to enter into a two-year lease agreement with Sea to Sky Adventure Co. to operate one of the tour booking windows in the centre.
While he insists his company's goal is to ensure that more guests coming by on Highway 99 do at least some of their recreating right here in Squamish, Levine's company doesn't book tours for everyone. Instead, it has entered into partnership deals with one tourism company in each sector -one rafting company, one climbing tour company, etc. - to book those companies' tours.
"Right now we are developing a viable tourism industry in Squamish, but we're not there yet," he said.
"We have so many people that stop along the highway and are on the way to Whistler who don't even know what we have available here. We want to make sure they have a chance to learn what we're about.
"In my view it works better if private business deals with private business than, say, Tourism Squamish dealing with private business."
But what about the tour companies that aren't partnering with Sea to Sky Adventure Co.?
Chalmers said there are at least two other booking windows at the centre available for lease. Either way, he said, leasing out those spaces helps fulfill the tour booking mandate without having to find funding for the service.
"From Squamish Sustainability Corp.'s perspective, it's a win because we're generating lease revenue, but we're also able to deliver a booking service as per the building's mandate, but at no cost to the district," he said.
"Our decision," Chalmers added, "was limited to whether or not we were going to entertain a private-sector contractor for that service. How he [Levine] operated his business is not limited in terms of what the lessee's business plan might be. And certainly there are other opportunities for booking services. There are other wickets in the facility, so if others wanted to go in there and provide booking services from the Adventure Centre, that's available too."
Chalmers said the two-year term of Sea to Sky Adventure Co.'s lease also makes it possible for Tourism Squamish to return to that role in the future, if it chooses to do so, and for the community to continue deliberating over what it wants the Adventure Centre to be.
"As a board and as a municipality, we have to give some thought to what the role of the facility is and what the cost and planning for the future of the building are," he said. "Is it something that's more along the lines of a recreation centre and a meeting place that should receive some form of subsidy, or is it more a facility to support business that should be cost neutral?"
Levine said he's hopeful that his company's new role will be part of the solution.
"It will cost some money in the short term, but in the long term it'll make a profit and it'll help build the tourism industry in Squamish," Levine said.
"I just think it's such a good-news story. Right now, you bring up the Adventure Centre to anyone and it's like, 'What a terrible story that is,' but now I think it's finally turning, and the municipal council is finally supporting it."
