The deadline for a new lease to provide an Inner Harbour home for the Maritime Museum of B.C. is today, but there’s still some wiggle room.
Negotiations for a lease in the historic CPR Terminal Build are “still ongoing,” said museum chairman Clay Evans on Tuesday. The museum has been homeless since the province asked it to vacate its longtime quarters in Bastion Square on Oct. 21.
“I think we’ll know whether it’s a go or not by week’s end,” Evans said. The first deadline expired Feb. 27, but the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority extended it to March 31, then to April 15.
The harbour authority is the property manager for the CPR building, which is owned by the province.
The province expects to collect $8.6 million in rent from the building over 20 years.
Three provincial ministries are involved in the complex negotiations involving the museum, which owns about 10,000 artifacts and many thousands of documents.
The CPR space — 6,000 square feet inside — is one-third the size of Bastion Square and may require as much as $1 million in “fixturing” before the museum could move in, Evans has said.
The province provides the museum with about $90,000 in gaming funds each year, compared to about $1.5 million that Nova Scotia provides annually to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.
