Business View Magazine | July 2019

174 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 What’s in a name? Centre 200 has now been granted permission to seek a consultant to value the facility, before going to market to see who’s interested. In the next year, it’s expected the call will go out to prospective companies for naming rights for the building. And Centre 200 certainly has a wealth of unique attributes in its favor. Number one – versatility. “We have a versatile Vari-Theatre system that allows us to change the configuration of our building,” says MacDonald. “They’re basically curtains on a track that we can move along the ceiling of the building, which is very high. We can go from 1,000 seats to 6,000 seats if we have a convention and want to split the floor space of the venue. In our arena, we can actually remove one side of the building – the wall can be taken off to expand the space so it’s open to the outdoors. We did that for a Harley-Davidson convention, where they made it an indoor/outdoor venue. The second important thing about Centre 200 is our experienced staff. The consistency is key. Sometimes, in buildings like this, just by their nature, there’s a lot of staff turnover, but most of our people, like Nadine, have been here quite a while. That’s a little unusual, but at the same time, their experience and knowledge is a great advantage. “We’re located right downtown, only a five- minute walk from most hotels. We have a casino attached along the side and we’re on the major transportation route of the city. From a loading standpoint, the building was made as a convention space with that in mind, so we have full load-in doors, where we can back tractor trailers right onto the arena floor. And we have loading docks, so you can save time and load from both ends of the building. And time is money.” Centre 200 offers the finest convention and entertainment space on beautiful Cape Breton Island and looks forward to welcoming one and all to its future events. PREFERRED VENDOR n F.C. O’Neill, Scriven and Assoc’s Limited www.onsa.ca