West Vancouver will not put a new art museum in Horseshoe Bay’s former Boathouse restaurant, after buying the property for that purpose just a few months ago.
On Monday, council approved a new motion – different than what was on the evening’s agenda – to instead look for a location in Ambleside to house a purpose-built arts and culture centre. The district will also spend $50,000 to clean up the Boathouse and make its exterior space available for “community pop-up event use” as soon as possible.
The original motion on the agenda was to move forward with planning to relocate the West Vancouver Art Museum to the Boathouse building on an interim basis. Various renovations were to be carried out in the former restaurant’s interior. This motion stated that the district would ultimately still seek to build a purpose-built centre in Ambleside.
Before council’s discussion, representatives from the arts & culture advisory group gave an entire presentation to the effect of the original motion of having the art museum at the Boathouse.
But then Coun. Linda Watt introduced her new motion.
“Although this was initially my idea to purchase this building and to use it as a home for the art museum, as time has gone by and I’ve seen how extensive and expensive this interim proposition would be, I’ve developed a lot of great reservations about continuing to put the 8,800 square feet entirely toward that,” she said.
Coun. Sharon Thompson said council has heard from the community a great desire to have a centralized museum.
“I also hear from the community that we’re looking for a more multi-use, dynamic, grassroots type facility in Horseshoe Bay, and the component of a $50,000 upgrade is just to get it to a point where you can actually go into the building and function in it and occupy it,” she said.
“There’s going to be some tremendous opportunity for things like pop-ups or little events that don’t need the full facility there, because it is going to take us a while to figure out what to do with this,” Thompson said.
Decision to buy Boathouse for museum 'obviously premature'
Among several public speakers, none of whom supported the museum in Horseshoe Bay, Elaine McHarg said numerous study groups and advisory boards have shown the need for a facility in Ambleside.
“The reason for this is that it’s our responsibility to profile the arts and the talent and the culture in this community; appropriately provide services; and to make it convenient for those who wish to attend, participate and learn and simply have joy in West Vancouver,” she said.
Coun. Nora Gambioli said the decision to buy the Boathouse and announce that it would become the art museum was “obviously premature” and didn’t involve enough consultation.
“So really, what we’re doing is we’re now trying to figure out what to do with this building we bought,” she said. “And my personal feeling is that we should be looking at some sort of uses that will generate some revenue.”
Gambioli made a friendly amendment to Watt’s motion, that opportunities to generate revenue at the Boathouse space be looked into. The amendment was adopted.
She also questioned why the district was spending $50,000 to clean up the space when council didn’t have a clear idea on what it would be used for yet.
“We should be deciding first what it could be used for, and then we invite expressions of interest for funding. That makes a little more sense to me,” she said.
Watt replied that cleaning up the space will allow potential funders to come and look at the space, and allow use of the building in the interim.
“This isn’t going to be a quick overnight decision,” she said. “I feel that while we’re going out for expressions of interest, at the very least, we can have some kind of community access to the building, even if it’s just with folding tables and chairs.”
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