Prince George, B.C. – For more than a decade,  when you bought a gift from a merchant at the Pine Centre Mall  at Christmas time, you could  have it wrapped  by volunteers from the Child Development Centre. This will all change next year.The Pine Centre Mall has decided to build a new customer service centre in the mall, and will offer gift wrapping year ’round by its own staff.

Mall Marketing Director, Karen Cameron, says  the  new  plan will actually be a boost to the CDC “Instead of the CDC just being able to collect donations for 18 days,  we will be  channelling all  gift wrapping proceeds from all of November and December to the CDC.  We will also be offering one half of  the proceeds from the sale of gift card boxes to the CDC and those sales are year ’round.”

Cameron says  staffing costs  will be covered by the Mall, so  that  cost will not be factored into the proceeds, but she says the Mall  hasn’t decided if the gift wrapping service will  be by donation or  if  prices will be set for various sized gifts as is the current practice “It will be basically paper and tape costs, we wouldn’t deduct our  staff costs off that donation (of proceeds).”

Most malls, their customer service areas do gift wrapping all year ’round, it’s just a model most malls have, so we’re just moving to that, and with the new one we’re going to build next year,  it just makes more sense.  They (CDC) will actually raise more money ’cause we’ll be giving them almost 7 weeks worth of revenue and right now, they’re probably getting  about 3 weeks.”

She says the CDC  has been given a year’s notice of the change of plans, but is welcome to send along some volunteers next year if they like.

Editor’s note:

The story has been corrected to reflect the  pricing  of  wrapping  is currently by size of  gift, not by donation as was initially reported.