Fredericton city council has approved a plan in principle to build the new regional performing arts centre on the current site of the Playhouse.
Council voted Monday to adopt six recommendations brought forward by the Playhouse board of directors, one of which includes selecting the Queen and St. John Street site as the location for the new performing arts centre.
Fredericton Playhouse vice-president Greg MacFarlane said the board went to council in October and pitched the idea of going to the community to ask about an alternative location, or a second location regarding the Playhouse — with the second option being the existing site.
MacFarlane said the current facility is in need of repairs, with a pipe breaking less than a week ago and frequent issues with the heating and ventilation system.
“We had water running in on the stage from the fly tower, we had a pipe break in the foundation and there was actually water coming up through the concrete. The week before, we had a six-foot crack in a sewage pipe in the basement that had to be repaired and we were very close to having to cancel a show because of the risk to the patrons around the gases and those types of things,” MacFarlane said.
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The city has been looking at the current Justice building site as a prime location for the new performing arts centre once the courthouses move into the Centennial Building, but MacFarlane said there was no word from the province on whether or not the city would be able to use the land.
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In December, the board took six recommendations to council. It was then left in the hands of city staff to look into the recommendations.
MacFarlane said city staff came back on Monday night and recommended council accept all six recommendations. Council-in-committee then approved them.
He said it’s “another step in a long process” that was started approximately seven years ago.
“So today, we take those six recommendations and we take another step forward. One of the big things is the technical review of the site, and the second is developing a procurement strategy for the city and Fredericton Playhouse to identify the design partners,” MacFarlane said.
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MacFarlane said there’s no set design yet, but said a technical review will be able to determine just how far out onto St. John Street the centre will go.
“That will obviously influence whether there is a street there or if it becomes a pedestrian walkway,” MacFarlane said.
“The total project cost is $45 million, but the actual design and construction is $33 million, so one of the recommendations was for council to approve in principle the $33 million so that we can start the design process. There wasn’t actually an approval of the $33 million, it was an approval in principle for the $33 million so we could frame the design process,” MacFarlane said.
He said the board is excited to start the technical review of the site and start the community engagement pieces around design, with the procurement strategy set to be rolled out with the city in the coming weeks.
Three city councillors vote not to accept all six recommendations
In an email to Global News, Fredericton City Coun. Stephen Chase said he believes the Justice building is “a better and more flexible site.”
He said using the site of the current Justice building site would also enable a Government of New Brunswick commitment that’s currently missing.
Chase indicated the province hadn’t had adequate time to tell the city when the building would be ready — information that could have proved valuable before abandoning the idea of building on the York Street site.
Fredericton City Coun. Greg Ericson said all six recommendations were bundled into the same vote on Monday night.
“Only one of them dealt with the site of the performing arts centre,” Ericson said. “The others were financial and enabled staff to solicit requests for proposal around design, and you know there are other elements to the development, but there are six different recommendations in their staff report.”
He said the first one was to officially choose the St. John Street location as the one to move forward from. Ericson said he supported half of those recommendations.
He said the city paid “a lot of money” for those downtown planning consulting documents and said this is possibly the only opportunity the city has to do something like that in the “foreseeable future” with a multimillion-dollar development in public space.
Ericson expressed concern over some of the other recommendations.
“Only with the vote last night did we authorize staff to do a feasibility study on the actual possibility of the new performing arts centre being developed on a closed or traffic-limited version of St. John Street, so we don’t even know if it’s technically possible yet in a very formal way,” Ericson said.
He said the city also hasn’t asked the legislative committee for permission at this point to change the use of St. John Street.
“If they think it’s a security threat or causes other problems with the legislature, they could probably say, ‘No, you can’t do that,” Ericson said. “The city is profoundly committed now, but the thing is, we didn’t have all the permissions and documents I think to actually take these very committed steps yet.”
Ericson said York Street is a better fit for the downtown, for the city’s planning documents and in terms of economic development in the downtown.
“My understanding of one of the values of having the York Street site chosen was that it exposed the patrons of the performing arts centre to walking by more and different restaurants than just the ones at the Beaverbrook Hotel or the ones on that corner,” Ericson said.
Ericson, however, said he recognized the board of directors for the playhouse communicated the urgency they feel in terms of starting a project and getting out of the current building they’re in because of the infrastructure breakdowns.
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