IT'S hard to put a price on culture. Particularly when times are tough and dollars are short, it's understandable if taxpayers want their government to focus on the basics, like fixing roads.
The trick is to find someone else willing to pay.
North Vancouver's cultural institutions are facing a lot of challenges right now, as many of them are crammed into the disintegrating Presentation House complex.
The gallery eventually plans to move into the Carrie Cates tug building right next to Lonsdale Quay. As an internationally acclaimed photographic art gallery, it's got a strong fundraising program and I for one was quite impressed last time the gallery people shared their plans in front of city council. They'll need some help, but not with money.
The museum is a different matter. I was down at a North Van Urban Forum event last week to hear its director explain the latest plans for a new museum.
The forum, by the way, is a really cool little gang of people with a genuine interest in North Vancouver's public spaces. It started out focused on what to do with the old National Maritime Centre site, but has taken up more and more issues. They hold most of their events down at the Café for Contemporary Art on Esplanade, where the owner, Tyler Russell, invites people to write and draw their ideas on his walls. It's a pretty creative form of public consultation, which probably explains why the city hasn't quite figured out how to participate yet. I do see councillors and council hopefuls down there though.
The museum has three problems: they have too much stuff, they badly need a new building, and they have a measly $45,000 in the bank.
Getting rid of stuff is almost as hard as collecting it. First you have to haul it all out and decide what is of real significance, then you have to find a tactful way of getting rid of the surplus. No one wants to see a pile of family heirlooms in the dumpster.
The building issue has been a bit of a saga. Last year, it looked like Onni was prepared to build a free museum as part of its big plans for the Safeway site at 13th Street and Lonsdale Avenue. The city felt the museum plans were too big, and worried what it might mean for long-term operating costs. That seems like an easy fix, right? Just build it smaller.
But Onni's offer came right on the heels of a similar tactic from the North Shore Credit Union, who "donated" $1 million to Presentation House Theatre as part of their redevelopment of the other corner on the same intersection.
City council started to notice that developers were showing up with community groups in tow to advocate for their project. It's easy to tell a developer to buzz off, a lot harder to tell your community theatre group to go away. So a new policy now bars builders from offering specific community goods as a sweetener. Instead, they produce some cash and council later decides how to spend it.
So the Central Lonsdale museum never happened. Then the conversation shifted to the maritime centre site, which remains a rusty missing tooth in the city's waterfront revitalization.
There's no shortage of ideas for the site, and for a while the leading one was to build some sort of cultural multiplex there, housing the theatre and the museum and possibly a Capilano University satellite campus.
But as Kirkpatrick pointed out during her café talk, any action on that site is years away. A more attractive option is the old pipe shop right next door. It's a historic building, appropriate for a museum, and it has the virtue of actually existing today. But it is less than half the size of what the museum wants and the renovations required, Kirkpatrick said, will likely run somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10 million. That's a long way from $45,000.
So who has $10 million bucks?
Well, Onni isn't the only one with a big project in the works. Several forum members raised the idea of hitting up Port Metro Vancouver for some cash as its Low Level Road and port expansion proposals go forward.
If there is anyone who could use some good will and has the money to buy it, it's the port.
It would seem to fly in the face of city council's new cultural amenities policy, but I think this idea is a winner.
The port, by the way, after a disastrous start, has really turned around their consultation process. There's a long way to go to hammer out all the details, but at least we're having an informed conversation now. The museum should be part of it.
Lastly, I really encourage people to check out the North Van Urban Forum at urbanforum.wordpress.com.
