THUNDER BAY -- The local conservation authority is cutting a centre that it says has been a financial drain for decades.
The Hazelwood Lake Centre was built in 1994 with the understanding that provincial funding would be available for maintenance. But with a change in government a year later that funding never returned, leaving the Lakehead Regional Conservation Authority to pay around $20,000 a year ever since for the building.
"We've been struggling for 20 years to keep this centre operating, maintaining it and having it for private functions," chair Bill Bartley said.
And so last fall, the board made a tough decision to close the centre. If the LRCA had known it would have to pay for the centre, it never would have been built in the first place.
"We have tried all sorts of marketing plans. We've hired marketing specialists to help us out figuring out what to do with the centre. We've attended trades hows and various other promotional aspects. We just could not seem to get the centre to break even," he said.
Never intended for public use, Bartley said the LRCA couldn't get enough functions to support the centre. It also had difficulty securing caterers because of how far out of town the centre is.
Starting next month the centre will be dismantled with Habitat for Humanity's ReStore salvaging what it can.
"At the end of the day some other people are going to benefit by this," Bartley said.
By the end of the summer Bartley is hoping the ground will be replanted and landscaped and will eventually see a pavilion built.
