The Canadian Canoe Museum announced Friday the conditional purchase and sale of property in Johnson Park in Peterborough for the site of a new museum.
The city-owned land is at 2077 Ashburnham Dr. in Peterborough’s east end on the shores of Little Lake, just north of Beavermead Park near the Trent-Severn Waterway headquarters.
The museum will pay $1,575,000 for the five acres of land in a transaction expected to be completed by the summer.
The museum had initially planned to build a new, state-of-the-art facility adjacent to the Peterborough Lift Lock in East City, to replace the aging and cramped facility on Monaghan Road, which was formerly a factory.
But that plan was scrapped earlier this year after an environmental study revealed on-site soil contamination.
That launched a renewed search for a new location, and Johnson Park was quickly identified as a top runner.
Peterborough city council on Monday approved the direction to proceed with the sale of the land subject to a number of conditions including rezoning, project validation and confirmation of site appropriateness.
The Canadian Canoe Museum intends to sell its current property at 910 Monaghan Rd. to help fund the new build project.
“Kicking off the New Year with this key milestone realized drives further momentum to our new world-class museum build,” said Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director.
“In less than a year, we’ve moved from walking away from a contaminated site to forming a new build project team and identifying and securing an alternate location. The purchase of a viable new site puts our project firmly on-track to be shovel-ready by the end of this year.”
Peterborough city Coun. Gary Baldwin, the city’s representative on the museum’s board, says the new location will enhance the Little Lake waterfront and Trans Canada Trail network.
“It’s an ideal location beside parks and greenspaces with nearby public parking at East Gate Park and Beavermead Park, as well as easy access to Highway 7/115,” Baldwin said.
Hyslop says the new build will take an intergrated project delivery (IDP) approach on all levels ranging from design to construction to “maximize efficiency and accelerate schedules.”
“This integrative and collaborative, team-based project delivery method will ensure the new museum project can begin construction before the end of this year and provide cost certainty as early as this spring with design concepts expected to be available for sharing by June,” she said.