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The opening of a diamond tourism centre originally slated to be opened by October 2012 at the site of the CasCom building downtown, has been pushed back again, now to open in March, according to a Crossworks Manufacturing spokesperson. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A downtown diamonds exhibit heralded in 2011 to be the next step in diamond tourism is slated to open within the next couple months, the company behind it says.

Crossworks Manufacturing Ltd., the territory's sole operating diamond polishing company, announced plans in August 2011 to open the unique diamond tourism centre inside the 49 St. CasCom building by January 2012.

As the original target date passed, the company pushed back the completion target date of the project to September or October 2012 - noting unforeseen delays for the facility, which is to be the first of its kind, showing visitors how diamonds mined, cut and polished in the NWT go from Mother Nature to storefront jewelry.

Months later, the project has still not launched but is still going ahead, confirmed Crossworks spokesman Dylan Dix, who told Yellowknifer this week that the company now plans to open the diamond tourism centre

by the end of March.

"It is our plan to open the centre in the first quarter of 2013," Dix stated in an e-mail, adding Crossworks has committed more than $200,000 to the project.

"The delays have been caused by the need to bring all the features and collaboration together to create an exhibit such as this."

The centre's opening has been widely anticipated, said Tracy Therrien, general manager of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre, who has been taking calls about the exhibit because it was advertised to open in 2012.

"We get a lot of calls on it, people asking where it is," Therrien said.

"Do they have a projected date? It's something like the Deh Cho Bridge."

While the city's tourism centre has a whole section dedicated to the diamond mines, including a 10-minute film on open pit diamond mining, Crossworks' facility - which is to include demonstrations of diamond polishing, artifacts, and videos detailing the processes at mines from NWT diamond producers De Beers Canada and Rio Tinto - will be a benefit to the city's tourism industry, Therrien said.

"Absolutely. It will be another thing for our visitors to do like the (legislative assembly), the museum, ourselves - it could create a whole day of visiting Yellowknife at no charge. We welcome it."

Pietro de Bastiani, associate director of the GNWT minerals, oil and gas division, also said the facility will be a nice addition to the information currently available about the territory's diamond industry at the visitors centre.

"We've always been supportive of any benefits and initiatives that draw attention and promote not only tourism but promote our primary industry right now which is diamond mining," he said about the private sector initiative.

"And that also provides some education on the interesting trail that the diamonds take from that exploration stage, all the way to the mining, all the way through the cutting and polishing, and finally to the consumers around the world. And so we've always been very, very interested in having things that not only local people can learn from but tourists, and that may, in fact, help attract tourism to the area. So from that perspective, we've always been interested and we hope that they have success in bringing it online."

De Bastiani said the department was shown display concepts of the facility back in the fall and to his knowledge, Crossworks was looking at bringing the project online sometime this year.

Dix declined to release images of the concept to Yellowknifer prior to the launch.

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