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Maritime Museum in limbo; Victoria councillor has ‘grave concerns’

City of Victoria officials want the province to ensure the Maritime Museum, which closed the doors on its Bastion Square location in October, finds a new home in the Steamship Terminal building.
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Maritime Museum of B.C. at Bastion Square in Victoria. The province has told the museum it must vacate by the building by the fall.

City of Victoria officials want the province to ensure the Maritime Museum, which closed the doors on its Bastion Square location in October, finds a new home in the Steamship Terminal building.

Councillors decided last week to try to arrange a meeting between Mayor Lisa Helps and Transportation Minister Todd Stone, the minister responsible for the building, to press the museum’s case.

“Nothing is going to happen if the province isn’t motivated,” Coun. Pam Madoff said.

The museum announced its plans to move from Bastion Square in September 2014, and said it had signed a deal giving it the exclusive right to negotiate a long-term lease for space in the former CPR Steamship Terminal building on Belleville Street. The museum closed its doors on Oct. 21.

Its option to lease was set to expire Saturday, but has been extended to the end of March.

Madoff said she has “grave concerns” about the museum’s move.

“For me, the initial premise that they had to discontinue operations in the [old courthouse] building because of safety issues is just not true,” Madoff said. “If that lens was used, we would be emptying most of the buildings in the city, including the legislature.”

Stone told the Times Colonist he would be happy to meet with Helps. “I look forward to sitting down with the mayor and talking to her about this and a number of other issues,” Stone said.

The museum has been trying to negotiate a lease for space on the bottom floor of the Steamship Terminal building, which is managed by the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, through the province’s Shared Services agency.

Plans call for the museum to move into a space of about 6,500 square feet, considerably smaller than the 18,000 square feet it occupied in Bastion Square.

Harbour authority chairman Bill Wellburn told councillors last week that the harbour authority would welcome the museum in the building — “provided that it doesn’t cause us financial loss.”

“At the end of the day, we’re committed at breaking even on the Steamship Terminal building. We’re not in the business of subsidizing,” Wellburn said.

As the head tenant in the building, the harbour authority has significant financial commitments, including lease costs of $4 million over 10 years, said interim CEO Rick Crosby. The harbour authority has also invested about $2.6 million in physical improvements to the building to make it suitable for lease. “Those are big numbers and that’s some of the context in terms of dealing with the Maritime Museum and trying to bring them into the building,” Crosby said. “We have to make the numbers work.”

Madoff said it’s the province’s responsibility to ensure the museum can make a go of it in the Steamship Terminal, adding it would be advantageous for the harbour authority to have a cultural and educational attraction such as the museum in the building.

“But really it’s up to the province, and I don’t think that they can expect the Maritime Museum to suddenly be able to pay market rent when they have not paid market rent in the past and were not given a period of time in which to rise to that occasion when that bar was increased,” Madoff said.

Madoff said it’s important that the province understands that the museum is a good fit in the Steamship building “and that we cannot lose such an important cultural institution.”

Museum vice-chairman Clay Evans said negotiations are continuing. He said it was important to remember that the museum is a non-profit organization.

“In order for us to succeed in that building, we’ll need a creative solution,” Evans said.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com