Science museum storage facility to be scaled down
New building could run out of space by 2024
The new $156-million building that’s meant to store artifacts at the Canada Science and Technology Museum has been scaled down and could run short on space five years after it opens.
The Collections and Conservation Centre, a storage building that’s being constructed next door to the main museum on St. Laurent Boulevard, will be smaller and less sophisticated than originally planned, l argely because costs exceeded estimates, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.
The main, rebuilt, $80-million building opened in November, and t he collections building will open in 2019. It was intended to store more than 90 per cent of the museum’s collection, from tiny instruments to streetcars and electrical generating equipment, which is currently in a private, rented building. It is also supposed to provide storage for the National Gallery, and offer laboratories for the Canadian Conserva- tion Institute.
Now a report by Treasury Board says it will be unable to do its full job. An access to information report uses the official name for the museum, which is National Museum of Science and Technology:
“The NGC’s and NMST’s long- term artefact storage needs will not be met. It is expected that the NMST may start running out of space in 2024,” Treasury Board says.
The Canadian Conservation Institute will be allotted some space, “but the more specialized laboratories it specifically needs will not be built.” The CCI is part of the Canadian Heritage department of the federal government.
The labs were cancelled because costs were underestimated, the documents indicate. The planners counted on spending $47.5 million on labs, mechanical and electrical equipment. The real cost turned out to be $119 million, so the labs will not be built, for now at least.
“The fourth floor of the building, slated to house these specialized laboratories, will remain empty or be used temporarily to meet NMST’s storage needs, until additional funding can be found to cover the costs of fitting up the laboratories,” the report says.
Then there were engineering problems.
The collections building, as approved, was designed to “wrap around” part of the main museum.
But t hat didn’ t work. One problem was that it would have covered up most of the parking spaces along the side and rear of the museum. Another issue was that some emergency exits from the main museum would have led into a construction zone, a situation that would have been considered a safety hazard. That meant they would have had to be sealed shut during construction. And since the museum must have working fire exits, the only option would have been to carve out new exits elsewhere in the museum.
The museum chose instead to move the whole collections building f arther away and abandon the wraparound design.
But it found it could no longer afford to building a structure of 51,000 square metres, as planned. Instead it is building 35,800 square metres, or what the Treasury Board calls “a much reduced footprint.”
The museum’s board approved the change in March 2017, choosing to stay within its budget. Since then, top management has led repeated media tours of the main museum, showing off the construction and then the finished product — without mentioning the changes to their bigger and more expensive construction project next door.