Two months without operating revenue is forcing the Maritime Museum of B.C. to make staff changes as it waits for a deal that will give it a home.
The museum has been granted transitional funding by the province to maintain operations and core staff, but it will not be enough to avoid changes in January, said Chris Evans, vice-chairman of the museum board.
“Operating funds have dried up due to the doors being closed Oct. 21,” Evans said.
Six core staff are working for the museum, he said.
Details about the changes have not been made public.
Jon Irwin, the museum’s executive director, was let go by the board last month. Evans would not say why Irwin was dismissed, but said it was not a cost-cutting measure.
The museum closed its 28 Bastion Sq. location to the public amid negotiations with the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority to relocate to the CPR Steamship Terminal building on the Inner Harbour. Museum officials signed a deal that gave them an exclusive right to negotiate a long-term lease for space on the bottom floor.
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.
The province’s Shared Service agency is negotiating on behalf of the museum. While the province, the harbour authority and the museum all say negotiations are continuing, there is no deal yet.
An agency spokesman would only say that “as the lease negotiations are ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment on the state and terms of those negotiations. We are hopeful we will settle arrangements that would see the Maritime Museum move their collection to the CPR Steamship building.”
It is expected that a move to the new location, close to the Royal B.C. Museum, Empress Hotel and B.C. legislature, would lead to a significant increase in attendance.
The museum has been attracting about 20,000 visitors annually in recent years.
The transitional funding will carry the museum through to the end of the negotiation period in April, by which time Evans said he hopes to have a lease in place and further transitional funding that will allow the museum to design the new display space and move its collection of artifacts.
The budget to move and re-establish the museum at the CPR building is estimated at more than $2 million, to be paid for with money from the federal and provincial governments and the museum’s capital fundraising campaign.
Some of the museum’s collection remains under care at the Bastion Square location, and some artifacts are being stored by the province in 20,000 square feet of secure, climate-controlled space.
The Maritime Museum opened in 1955 as a naval museum on Signal Hill, just outside the gates of HMC Dockyard in Esquimalt. In 1965, it moved to the former Supreme Court building in Bastion Square.
About 35,000 artifacts and 40,000 historical photographs are in the museum’s collection.
The province has said the museum’s former building requires significant repairs and upgrades. A business case is to be developed to help determine the future of the building.
