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Building a new Royal B.C. Museum no more expensive than renovating, CEO says

Rebuild to remove asbestos, meet seismic standards far more expensive than suggested in 2018 report that critics rely on, museum boss says

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The head of the Royal B.C. Museum says a 2018 report calling for $150-million in upgrades to the existing building is badly out of date and renovating the museum would cost almost as much as building a new one for $789 million.

CEO Alicia Dubois said the 2018 report for the museum, which critics rely on to criticize the decision to build an all-new building, was trumped by a later in-depth engineering analysis of modernizing the structure and meeting modern seismic safety standards.

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Premier John Horgan has faced a firestorm of criticism for announcing the plan to replace the 54-year-old museum without any public consultation and without a public business case or design for the new building.

Tourism Minister Melanie Mark has promised to lay out the business case on Wednesday, which could answer some of the questions around what could be the most expensive museum in Canadian history in straight, uninflated dollars.

Dubois told Postmedia News on Friday that after the 2018 report, a full engineering analysis was carried out on the cost of seismically upgrading the building and removing asbestos in the walls.

Doing those things in the exhibition hall would require stripping the walls and floors down to the studs, Dubois said. Overhauling the Fannin Tower section of the museum would be even more complex, she said, as it must be anchored into the bedrock.

“What became apparent and what is really the foundation of the business plan is that when you look at the dollars that it would take to do all of that upgrading, you get to a point where you’re reaching very near to the cost of a rebuild,” said Dubois, who was appointed head of the museum in February.

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The 2018 report laid out the museum’s $150-million “bold vision.” The aim was to phase the upgrades over 25 years, including a “complete transformation of the museum and archives precinct and will include important seismic and safety upgrades, comprehensive gallery redevelopment, reinvigorated temporary exhibition space on the ground floor, a collections and archives centre and conference and event space.”

This was to include a $30 million development to revamp the public spaces on the ground floor including “essential seismic upgrades” and revitalization of the Emily Carr Gallery, Pacific Worlds Gallery and Clifford Carl Hall.

The CEO at that time, Jack Lohman, was forced out in 2021 after a damning report into institutional racism at the museum found the workplace was “dysfunctional and toxic.”

The government is also facing pushback on the plan to close the museum on Sept. 6, four years before construction begins on the new museum.

Bruce Williams, CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, said he and other Victoria tourism operators were caught off guard by news of the eight-year closure and the cost.

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“The whole thing was a bit of a sticker shock,” Williams said. “Why did they not try and find a site where they could build it and keep the other one open?”

The museum welcomes 800,000 visitors a year and has an annual economic impact of $48 million.

Dubois said she knows “there is significant community concern” around the museum’s closure but said the museum would have a presence across B.C. through roving and satellite exhibits.

For example, Mark has floated the idea of having the woolly mammoth erected at Vancouver International Airport and the orcas at Victoria’s Ogden Point cruise ship terminal. Dubois said those locations have not been confirmed yet.

Tim Willis, former executive vice-president of the Royal B.C. Museum, said he’s “sad there was not more consideration for allowing the existing building and its exhibits to have a longer life.”

Willis agrees the museum is in desperate need of revitalization and a thoughtful vision of the organization’s future and Indigenous reconciliation. However, none of that was laid out in the sudden May 13 announcement.

The government’s timeline for the project says public engagement will start this fall, after the closure of the current museum. That’s also when the government will begin the procurement process for the new building.

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Dubois noted the museum’s Imax wing will remain open until January.

This fall, the government will break ground on the $224 million archives and collection building in Colwood, a suburb of Victoria. That building, which will be finished in 2025, will be a space for educational programs and will house some of the contents of the Fannin building, Dubois said.

Next spring, the exhibition hall contents will be moved to a leased warehouse.

The museum’s collection consists of seven million objects spanning 500 million years, fewer than one per cent of which are on display at any given time. The museum also includes the world’s largest and most comprehensive Emily Carr collection, including more than 1,200 works of art and thousands of pages of her writing.

A year later, in spring 2024, consultation will begin on the design of the new building. That’s when crews will remove asbestos and start demolishing the exhibition hall.

Two years after that, in 2026, construction will start on a new museum with a projected 2030 opening.

This timeline, however, could be history if B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon has his way. He’s vowed to cancel the “vanity museum boondoggle” if he becomes premier in the 2024 election.

Asked about whether she thinks the project will be cancelled, Dubois said “I don’t see it happening. … “I think it’s time to broaden the conversation and move it away from being a political conversion and more of a practical conversation.”

kderosa@postmedia.com

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