Turning the page
Confederation Centre CEO welcomes news of library move
The iconic Confederation Centre of the Arts building has long needed additional space.
Not surprisingly, CEO Steve Bellamy welcomes the pending move of the Confederation Centre Public Library to a new location across Queen Street to the Dominion Building.
Last week, the federal and provincial governments announced joint funding for the construction of the Charlottetown Library Learning Centre, which is being billed as a modern cultural and educational place.
Clearing out the library will open up roughly 20,000 square feet of space. Bellamy says there is no shortage of potential use for that space, noting the centre currently rents about 30,000 square feet off-site and owns off-site space for both storage and theatre preparation.
More gallery climate-controlled storage space, for one, is needed for the centre’s collection of more than 17,000 items, which includes paintings, sculptures and historically important documents.
Finding adequate rehearsal space has been a big bone of contention as well.
“The size of the theatrical productions that we do require large rehearsal spaces – and we don’t have those,’’ says Bellamy.
The centre, he adds, often needs simultaneous rehearsal space with a number of shows running over the same period, most notably the centre’s busy lineup during the annual Charlottetown Festival.
Bellamy envisions the public still having regular access to much of the space the library currently occupies.
“I am certain the main floor of the library will continue to be community engagement space, as it is now,’’ he says.
“It will continue to be active community space, but portions of it might be rededicated to education programming.’’
The province, not the Confederation Centre of the Arts, runs the Confederation Library.
Roughly $175,000 of the $910,000 provided to the centre in annual provincial funding is earmarked for the centre “hosting the provincial library,’’ says Bellamy.
He is eager to sit down with the province to talk about overall funding that would include funding for programming in the space currently occupied by the library.
“The conversation we will have with the province will be around the fact that we will continue to program that space in a way that benefits the community and we will talk about it in the context of our overall funding from the province,’’ he says.
Bellamy says some of the space could be used for generating revenue, such as training and professional development in the culture sector, as well as food service and a gift shop.
While Bellamy is eager to make good use of space that will become available when the library moves, he is also pleased the library will be a close neighbour.
“It is certainly related to what we do in the sense that we see ourselves as a learning institution,’’ he says.
“So, we’re really pleased that it (will be) right across the street and it is essentially going to be a part of the same downtown hub.’’