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AUGUST 2016
MEETING PLACES Victoria Conference Centre One Of The Best In BC Conference Centres Are An Effective Way To Promote A Community BY DAVID HOLMES
T
he concept of a meeting place, a universally recognized location where the public can gather and where important discussions and business transactions could occur has been a part of the human experience since the dawn of civilization. British Columbia’s First Nations perfected the concept with the building of elaborate Longhouses that served a variety of social and cultural purposes. In Europe every village had a community hall or Great Hall that served an identical function. Far from diminishing, in the electronic age the need for such facilities has become ever more important, only now the style, size and variety of the venues has reached unprecedented levels. A formal meeting place by definition can be anything from an intimate boardroom cloistering a handful of individuals in private discussion, to a full blown conference centre with 1,000 plus
The Conference Centre is across the street from the Crystal Garden and is attached to the Fairmont Empress Victoria delegates coming to the location from around the world. Typically a formal meeting place would be found within the structure of a
major hotel, or in a specially designed and constructed conference facility. Regardless of scale all have the same things in common:
facilitating the coming together of people in the most positive and efficient manner possible. “What a meeting place does is bring outside business, individuals and organizations to this community, which exposes it to these individuals who will ideally then look at it for alternate purposes such as leisure, travel, destination, residential and others,” explained Denise Tacon, General Manager of the Vancouver Island Conference Centre (VICC) located in Nanaimo. On Vancouver Island the Victoria Conference Centre (VCC) and its companion Crystal Garden comprises the largest operations of its type on the Island. The VCC alone provides more than 73,000 square feet of meeting space, features 19 different multi-purpose meeting rooms (including a 400 seat lecture theatre). Located directly across the street is the 25,000 square foot Crystal Garden, a historic structure in the provincial SEE MEETING PLACES | PAGE 21