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Museum board excited about possible home in conference centre

Council instructs staff to look at institutional uses for new library building Plans to put Whistler’s museum into the conference centre instead of the proposed library/museum facility could prove fruitful, according to the chair of the Whistler

Council instructs staff to look at institutional uses for new library building

Plans to put Whistler’s museum into the conference centre instead of the proposed library/museum facility could prove fruitful, according to the chair of the Whistler Museum & Archives Society.

"There are synergies that were there with the library obviously from an educational point of view, but there’s equally strong synergies with the conference centre and with Tourism Whistler," said Stephen Henderson, chair of the board.

"I think the number of visitors going through the museum would be substantially higher if we were in proximity to the conference centre."

Council recently directed staff to discard the plans to build a $10 million library/museum facility near the parking lot on the Main Street loop and instead pursue a scenario where the two institutions would be built separately.

That means $500,000 worth of design plans drawn up over the past year are now off the table.

Staff will now conduct a feasibility study that would put the museum at the underground space once used by Mountain World, next to the conference centre. At the same time they will explore the development of a library on the original site of the joint project. Staff will also be looking into the potential of putting institutional space, some residential housing and limited commercial uses in the library building.

"We’ll be undertaking a planning study (for our civic or institutional uses)," said Martin Pardoe, parks planner for the municipality.

"We did one several years back and it’s time that we updated that and now with the Olympics coming on and other facilities possibly being developed in relation to the Olympics in or near the village, we need to assess what our needs are."

While Councillor Kristi Wells supported the direction in general, she voted against the motion saying council should aggressively pursue a public private partnership or P3 with the library building.

"I truly believe that a P3...will allow for the library to be built better, faster and more efficiently," she declared at the meeting.

"There’s a potential for it to cost nothing to the taxpayers and end up with a better product.

"It’s very much a win-win (situation) and looks well beyond your traditional civic building."

The remaining council members voted to move ahead with studies for both sites without looking at P3s.

"We haven’t said this is going to be a purely civil building," said Councillor Ken Melamed.

The land identified for the library is owned by the crown and has a restrictive covenant on it.

"That restrictive covenant states that the land may be used for parking and auxiliary purposes and that it can also be used for civic purposes," said Martin Pardoe, parks planner at the municipality.

"The library/museum was considered a civic project so it was acceptable to (the province.)"

He added that if the municipality wants to deviate from those uses, they might have to renegotiate that covenant with the province. Staff has yet to verify whether a mixed library/institutional building would fall under that covenant.

The plans for the library/museum facility went back to the drawing board after fundraising efforts fell far short of their original goal.

Originally, the municipality planned to fund half the cost for the $10 million library/museum facility. The remaining $5 million was to come from fundraising through the joint Capital Campaign, which floundered in the weak economic climate.

When it became clear the campaign would not meet its goals, the municipality reworked their financial plans accordingly.

In the current Five Year Plan the municipality has held $7.7 million for both the library and museum. Another $2.8 million is available in the long-term forecast.

Though the long-range financial forecasts show the municipality footing the entire cost of the buildings, council has only ever approved a $5 million contribution to the project to date.

Still Wells said she was not comfortable with the municipality holding $10 million for the library/museum in the budget. She was also concerned about the long-term operational costs of the library building down the road. She said currently there is no secure funding source other than the municipal coffers.

Developing a P3 is an opportunity to create something a little more sustainable than that, she said, and could give the municipality long-term operational dollars.

Chair of the Library Board Anne Fenwick said she was pleased with council’s decision to move forward with the library. She’s sees a synergy with the library and institutional uses and perhaps a small commercial component like a Friends of the Library gift shop.

As for the yearly operational costs, she said that’s the municipality’s responsibility, not the private sector.

"Nobody looks at going for private sector for operating costs for the ice rink or the swimming pool; it’s just part of a municipal budget," she said after the council meeting.

"The library is a municipal service. Our feeling is...it should be treated as such.

"It’s something they need to pay for just like they pay for the trails, just like they pay for the swimming pool and the ice rink and the sports fields."

Both chairs of the museum and library boards have said fundraising efforts may start up again once plans are established.

Henderson is confident the museum board will be able to drum up money from the provincial and federal governments, particularly if the museum gets a category A designation, just as it did in the design plans for the joint facility.

This requirement, as designated by the Canadian Conservation Institute, deals with standards in conservation, preservation, environmental controls and security features.

"And why that is important to us is that it allows us to bring in travelling exhibits from other institutions," said Henderson.

"It also allows us the ability to get funding opportunities from the federal government."

Henderson is adamant that wherever the museum finds its home in the future, it must have a category A designation.

"We’re open to (the conference centre) location if it meets category A requirements," he said.

Financial opportunities for the museum may also come from the Olympic Games, which is another reason to boost the designation of the museum. Henderson said most Olympic museums around the world meet the status of category A.

Henderson said now the museum might need more room to tell the Olympic story. In the old design plans with the joint building, the museum was to have roughly a 10,000 square footprint, half the space used for exhibits and the other half for storage and office space. The Mountain World site is roughly 12,000 square feet.

"Four thousand square feet meets the need of fulfilling our mandate for basically natural history and telling the story of the evolution of Whistler and the basic recreational sports history but would not be sufficient to tell the Olympic story.

"We are being asked to do much more than most community museums."