Old Fort William gets facelift.

• Author: GOULIQUER, DIANNE
• Position: Conference and catering facilities to be expanded - Brief Article

Facility expands to attract corporate clients

Old Fort William is evolving. The reconstruction site of the criginal Fort William, which served as the headquarters for the Northwest Company's vast fur-trading empire of the early 1800s, is expanding its conferencing and catering facilities to attract more corporate visitors.

Peter Boyle, of Old Fort William's corporate development and consulting department, says about $815,000 is being invested in a capital improvement program that will allow for bigger gatherings and more business functions.

He says groups in the past have been turned away because Old Fort William did not have the contemporary facilities that businesses requested.

The capital improvements program is changing that.

"Primarily it's to meet demand; we get a lot of requests for multiple functions on the site and we haven't been able to handle them all," Boyle says. "Over the last year or so we've gone back and renovated our facilities just to ensure that they have the proper washrooms and the proper electrical facilities and seminar equipment.

"More than anything we're responding to demand. We've gone from (accommodating) 350 people to 550 people. We're a unique facility and businesses are looking for something that's a little unique and a little unusual where they can conduct business and then maybe go out in a canoe or maybe do some natural history programming or some cross-cultural communications programming in the Native encampment."

Boyes says that among the changes at Old Fort William is the purchase of LDC (liquid crystal display) projectors to allow for seminar presentations, and improvements have been made to the Fort's canteen.

"We invested about $80,000 in the canteen to make it more suitable for both business and traditional catering, particularly in the off-season," he says. "Also, we've invested...