Construction to replace the aging Royal BC Museum is set to start before the next provincial election adding a complicated layer to the ongoing saga.
The province released a business plan on Wednesday showing the cost options were similar to building a new museum compared to seismically upgrading the current museum.
The business case shows projections of rapidly increasing costs for a replacement if the province decides to delay the project.
The BC Liberals have announced plans to stop the $789 million rebuilding project if they are elected in 2024. It is unclear how starting construction before the election would change the promise.
“The facilities are beyond their useful life with major systems including heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems that are outdated,” the report reads.
“The current museum is beyond its useful life and is seismically unsafe for visitors, staff, collections and exhibits.”
The business plan outline that revitalizing the current museum would take six years and cost $979 million.
Due to the complexity of moving the current museum items and demolishing the galleries, it was determined keeping the building partially open during the rebuilding was not possible.
The new archives building is expected to be open in Colwood by 2025 and will continue the museum’s presence.
“We are releasing the business case to provide as much background as possible. The announcement of a new museum is the culmination of a decade of work. We have done our due diligence to determine the best path forward. The business case is a culmination of five years of work,” Minister for Tourism, Art, Culture and Sport Melanie Mark said.
“The cost to repair would exceed the cost to replace.”
The province has set an expectation for fundraising but has not disclosed how much they have asked the Royal BC Museum to raise.
BC Liberal leader Kevin Falcon has vowed to stop the rebuild if elected premier in the next provincial election.
“At a time when British Columbians are struggling — the highest housing prices, the highest gas prices — the premier thinks this is the right time for a vanity museum project,” he told reporters last week.
“Nowhere in the budget can I see any capital spending. Nowhere can I see a budget plan.”
Horgan responded in the legislature, saying the first record of the issue coming to the cabinet’s attention was in 2006 under a previous Liberal government.
“It was revisited again in 2013, again in 2014, again in 2015 and finally — and this is the part that I think is important — in 2017, the then-finance minister, after five visits to Treasury Board, advised the (tourism) minister of the day to return with a capital plan for the precinct by September 30, 2017,” he said.
“He didn’t make that meeting, but we did. We took that information. And for the past five years, we have been working with stakeholders.”
The museum is scheduled to close in September, with the new one set to reopen in 2030.
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