Canadian Canoe Museum pulling out of Lift Lock site
Deal with Parks Canada is off because of ground contamination from former Westclox factory
The Canadian Canoe Museum has abandoned plans to build a state-of-the-art facility on Parks Canada land beside the Lift Lock and is looking for a new waterfront site in the city.
The museum announced the decision Wednesday, saying the ground contamination discovered earlier this year makes the site no longer viable for the project. The site along the Trent Canal was found to contain the chemical compound trichloroethylene (TCE) in addition to a variety of other chemicals from the former Westclox clock factory next door.
The museum would not have been made to pay for the cleanup, said museum executive director Carolyn Hyslop, but construction could not have begun until the Parks Canada lands were fully remediated.
It’s unclear how long that might take, Hyslop said, but museum officials expected long delays that would significantly hike the construction costs.
Meanwhile, the museum has already fundraised a bit more than $45 million from donors who are expecting a museum built “in a reasonable and respectable time frame,” she said.
It’s disappointing, said Hyslop, but a new site “is the only way forward for this project.”
The earlier cost of the new museum had been pegged at
$65 million, and construction was scheduled to start later this year for an opening in 2023. The museum received $1.4 million from the federal government, had asked city council for $4 million and has applied for further federal and provincial funding.
Now it’s unclear exactly what the budget will be, Hyslop said — she said that will be clear when a new site is selected.
Alternative waterfront sites in the city are already being considered by museum board members, Hyslop said, since there’s no lack of determination to see the new facility built.
Although she wouldn’t say exactly where the board is looking, Hyslop did say they are considering sites on any body of water — including Little Lake — and that they have several locations to consider.
The plan is to have a site selected and construction begun by the end of 2021 with a new building design from the one they already had.
The design by Irish firm Heneghan Peng is “not transferable” to another site, Hyslop said, since the building was designed specifically to sit on the hill next to the Liftlock.
“We do have to rethink and redesign the new museum for whichever site we choose,” she said.
Heneghan Peng’s design was chosen in 2016 from five finalists (and 97 proposals) in an international competition.
Hyslop said it’s too early to say if they will do a redesign or whether another firm will be sought — or even how much the museum paid for the initial design.
No comment was available on Wednesday from anyone at Heneghan Peng.
The international search for an architect was organized when the museum’s executive director was Richard Tucker.
Tucker later changed roles to become the project director, meaning he would oversee the plans for the new museum, but Hyslop said he quit to move back to British Columbia earlier this year and has since been replaced by Vanessa Rogers.
Parks Canada is “disappointed” that the museum won’t be built on its lands next to the Peterborough Lift Lock, wrote communications officer Karen Feeley in an email, but added it understands the reasons for the change of plans.
Parks Canada had been unaware of the contamination until the museum discovered it in May, Feeley wrote.
Now Parks Canada is working with the provincial Ministry of the Environment and with the neighbouring landowner — Skyline Developments of Guelph, which has converted the former clock factory into Time Square apartments — to determine the extent of the contamination.
“This investigation will provide us with the necessary information to develop a path forward,” she wrote.
The Lift Lock Visitor Centre at the site will remain, Feeley added; it was going to be demolished and replaced with the new canoe museum.
Greg Jones is the president of SkyDev, the development branch of Skyline. He wrote in an emailed statement to The Examiner on Wednesday that his firm is working with the Ministry of the Environment to study the “historical contamination.”
Jones also wrote that engineers are implementing measures to ensure the contamination poses no risk to the public, and that SkyDev is still planning two new apartment buildings on the Time Square lands.
It was in May the museum learned of the contamination, which Hyslop said was not detected by consultants hired to do a site assessment.
“There were no issues related to the adjacent property that were noted ( by the consultants),” Hyslop said. “So we moved forward with the planning, on their recommendation.”
The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks had no updates available by deadline Wednesday.
“We do have to rethink and redesign the new museum for whichever site we choose.” CAROLYN HYSLOP CANADIAN CANOE MUSEUM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR