Library hopes to start construction in the spring, while museum may move into conference centre
The municipality has scrapped the plans for the $10 million library/museum and is looking to build a library facility only at the original site.
Another opportunity has come up where the museum could go into the newly renovated conference centre.
"The direction that council has given is to start to work with the library, see what we can do with their site... and at the same time there’s another opportunity that just emerged for the museum that we want to investigate," said Mayor Hugh O’Reilly.
This new direction is a departure from plans that were developed over the past year and a half that would have seen a $10 million joint library/museum facility built in the parking lot in the Main Street loop, adjacent to where the library and museum now sit in trailers. Half the money for that building was to come from the municipality with the other half from fundraising by a capital campaign.
But when a year of fundraising produced less than $750,000 – and most of that coming from the Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation – the plans were put on hold.
Anne Fenwick, chair of the library board, has been waiting throughout the summer for a decision from the municipality and is very supportive of council’s new direction.
"I think it’s a good move," she said.
"I think we realized that the joint facility as planned was more money than could be managed at this time due to the problems with fundraising. And so there was obviously need for some changes to be made.
"With the buildings being split we can move forward with the library, which is the more urgent need."
Representatives from the museum board could not be reached for comment.
Since April 2002 the municipality spent $500,000 developing the plans for the $10 million library/museum building.
"We were working with the library/museum and they had a high degree of confidence that all their research has said that they could fundraise," said O’Reilly.
"We were prepared to put our money in so we went ahead and started investing money in that project."
Over the course of the year, the architects developed extensive plans for the building and had completed the project brief.
"The project brief is a document which spells out very clearly all of the components of the building, what it’s going to look like, how it’s planned," said Gerry Longson, development services manager at B.C. Buildings Corporation, which was involved in the development of the joint library/museum.
Roughly 30 people were involved in the development of that design, he added.
Still, the work to date may not have been in vain.
Depending on the development and design of the library, some of the information may transfer to the new plans.
"It depends on the nature of the redeveloped project," said Longson.
"There is some information about this site and services and things like that, that are very useful but the rest of it really depends on the nature of the project."
Though it was too early to discuss a timeframe or building design for the library building, Bill Barratt, general manager of community services at the municipality, said there will be information from the first design that will crossover to the new project.
"It’ll be a scaled back building," he said.
"There’s a lot of work that’s still consistent."
Longson, who has worked with municipalities in the past, said the setback is not unusual.
"I find, and this is more my personal experience because BCBC has not been doing an extensive amount of work with municipalities over the last while... but with municipal projects it takes two or three runs at a project to finally get it to the point where it can be realized," he said.
"Budgets change, council changes, communities change, the Olympics were announced in Whistler and of course that’s made a huge difference in priorities. So no, it’s not unusual."
In fact, since Whistler was awarded the 2010 Olympic Games on July 2, more opportunities for funding may come with the legacies, particularly in funding for the museum.
In the meantime municipal staff are looking at the space in the conference centre to see if it’s a feasible spot for the museum.
Work on the library is still in the very preliminary stages at the moment but Fenwick is hopeful to break ground by next spring. "Whether it’s early spring or late spring, that’s still the library’s goal because we are so cramped and so desperate for more space," she said.
There has yet to be discussions about restarting the capital campaign for the buildings.
"I would imagine there would be some form of fundraising," she said.
"I don’t anticipate a large capital campaign like we had before. And that’s one of the things that the community was telling us, that the municipality needed to be more involved with the financing for the library because it is a municipal responsibility."
