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West Georgia Boat Center off of Lafayette Parkway in LaGrange is now Boateka.

The boat shop celebrated the change with a ribbon cutting hosted by the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday morning.

General Manager Jordan Burke said the change became effective Feb. 1.

“We have gone from West Georgia Boat Center to Boateka of West Georgia. In that process, we are now selling Boateka boats rather than our standard dealership boats,” Burke said.

Burke explained that Boateka boats are all certified pre-owned boats.

“We pull them out of Freedom Boat Club, we go through 100-point inspection on them and then we resell them to the public,” Burke said.

Burke said they are still part of the same company, Brunswick, which is more famous for their bowling and billiards products.

“We are still owned by Brunswick, so everybody is a sister company together. Boateka has a couple different branches right now but we do work in partnership with the group that is still a part of Eclipse Marine Group,” he said.

Burke said the company sent him down from Pennsylvania but he has enjoyed the move.

“I am new to LaGrange and I am enjoying it. We’re working a lot but I’m very happy to have made the move,” Burke said.

Burke said the majority of their boats are pre-owned. All Boateka boats are preowned but they do carry some new fishing boats through their Falcon line.

The ribbon cutting was Wednesday, but Boateka is holding a grand opening on Saturday, Feb. 10 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“We’ll have some food, we’ll have music, but it’s really just trying to get the community out here to see what we do,” Burke said.

Boateka is located at 225 E Render Street in LaGrange.