$1B museum project shakes up legislature
Opposition calls demolition, rebuild plan wasteful while administrators say structure is unsafe
A slow trickle of guests is winding in and out of the Royal British Columbia Museum as crisp winds swirl around the queue.
Some have doubtlessly been drawn in by the low ticket price of $5, resulting from the current closure of the museum’s third floor for a decolonization project. Some, such as Jim and Brenda Peever from Langley, B.C., say they wanted to see what they could before the museum shuts its doors.
“When I heard the cost of what it was going to be to rebuild it, I personally thought it was fine the way it is now,” Brenda said. “And shutting it down for eight years … We’ve got adult kids from Scotland that came over and we didn’t have time to see it that time, but we thought we’d take them back. Now it’s unlikely we can do that.”
Once these doors are shut, they’re due to be hit with a wrecking ball.
Before the pandemic, the museum drew 880,000 visitors per year. The demolition means some treasured exhibits for which many British Columbians harbour deep nostalgia will be inaccessible, including the life-sized woolly mammoth model perpetually complemented by throngs of wide-eyed children.
The decision has the museum itself now at the centre of a political fight, but those in charge say tearing it down is far better than the potential alternative — a devastating earthquake.
They plan to release a seismic report next week during a technical briefing detailing the dangers of the current building and say the problems go far beyond structural concerns.
The NDP government agrees the museum is in poor shape and needs to be closed for eight years and rebuilt, an announcement that is not sitting well with some in the province, due in no small part to the cost of the project: a gobsmacking $789 million.
Add the cost of a secondary storage facility project the government has also approved, and the bill exceeds $1 billion.
One of those opposed is Kevin Falcon, B.C.’s freshly minted leader of the opposition Liberal party. In the first week back at the legislature after being elected leader of the Official Opposition, Falcon said the controversial announcement came at a good time for him to start lobbing questions at the premier about spending.
“It’s a gift, obviously,” he told the Star. “It demonstrates so clearly how screwed up their priorities are, frankly, when we’ve got, just in the Victoria area alone, literally 100,000 people that cannot get access to a family physician.”
Falcon said he’s not opposed to upgrading the aging museum, which was built in 1967, but that demolishing the “perfectly good” building only to rebuild it is just plain wasteful.
“The fact that this government would shut it down with little to no consultation and talk about spending a billion dollars to build some vanity museum project for this premier is just so unacceptable to me,” he said.
“Nobody has asked for this.” But a 2018 report on the building’s structure found that it’s not perfectly good, museum administrators told the Star.
WSP Canada found seismic concerns with the structure that pose a danger to the public, said Kim Anderson, executive project director of the Royal BC Museum modernization project.
“They see some pretty fundamental flaws in what we know about building performance today,” Anderson said, referencing the report. “The portion of the building above the main floor is going to be stiffer and respond differently in an earthquake than the main floor does, and that could end up in a catastrophic event.”
Victoria is in what’s considered one of the most seismically active areas in Canada. Fixing the museum’s structural issues would involve stripping it down to its base structure to examine it, plus anchoring it to bedrock, among other complex challenges, she said.
It isn’t only the seismic issues, she said: the building also contains asbestos, lead paint and arsenic. Last year during B.C.’s catastrophic rainfall the museum had to close due to sewage flooding parts of it.
To do such repairs would mean removing all exhibits and putting them somewhere else, Anderson said.
Adding up all the issues and what it would cost to upgrade the building and fix its problems, it makes more sense to build a new museum, said Alicia Dubois, the museum’s CEO.
“When you look at the risk to people, being a knowledgeable owner and understanding the risk to people is something that cannot be ignored,” Dubois said.
She added museums are not only important educational facilities, but also serve economic functions as tourist draws. The business case for the museum will also be released this week.
Melanie Mark, B.C.’s minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport, told the Star in an email the announcement did not come together within a few days and was actually the result of several years of work.
A 2018 report by WSP Canada found seismic concerns with the building’s structure that pose a danger to the public