Yellowknife's sinking visitor centre moving to new temporary location

Yellowknife's Northern Frontier VisitorCentre will be moving to a new, temporary location because of major structural issues with the current building.

At a meeting Thursday night, the association that runs the tourism centre decided to stick to a plan to leave the building by May 15.

The centre, which opened about 25 years ago,was built on pilings and partly overhangs a small pond. It's been sinking and shifting for years.

Kyle Thomas, president of the visitor's centre, says it's too expensiveto repair the current building and bring it up to code.

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It's not clear where the temporary location will be, but Thomas says the city and territorial government have committed to ensuring visitorservices aren't interrupted by the move.

"The details of what will come in the short term have yet to be defined," he said. "We're hoping those will be defined within the next week."

More than 50,000 people visitedthe centre in 2016, according to its statistics, which is three times more than the number of visitors 10 years ago.

During that time, the centre has received only minor annual operational increases to keep up with inflation.