After four years, Fort William Historical Park will be closing its gateway south of the border.
The Fort opened the Canada Gateway Centre in Grand Marais, Minn. in May 2009 with the help of David Parsons of Parsons Management and owner of the Grand Marais Inn. Since the project started four years ago, the company has filed for bankruptcy meaning the display will be closing.
Historical Park spokesman Marty Mascarin said the Fort’s contract with the company was about the run out anyway, so it wasn’t going to affect the historical park.
He called it a coincidence that the company was filing for bankruptcy the same time the contract was running out.
“In terms of the contract, I suppose the best analogy is that it is a cellphone contract,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with what you have but the contract is winding down so we’re just giving thought to looking at other options that may exist in Grand Marais.”
Mascarin said the Fort’s contract doesn’t expire until August. So far the Fort doesn’t have any concrete plans regarding a new project in Grand Marais.
He said they will continue to honour the contract they have at the moment before looking at those other options.
The display was intended to attracted more tourism to the city and to the region. The Gateway featured many items from the park, including blankets, fur packs and barrels.
Mascarin said they are working to retrieve those items and suspects the process should go smoothly.
“Grand Marais and especially the traffic that they get there in the summer months are quite substantial,” he said. “We’d like to think given the cross border proximity that we have to that area we would like to maintain a presents there.”
Mascarin didn’t know off hand how much the fort was paying to occupy that space and also wasn’t sure if management knew about the private companies financial troubles.
Tbnewswatch.com attempted to contact Parsons for a comment but was not successful.
