Rothenburger — Options for performing arts centre may come down to zero

COLUMN — How many possible sites do you think there are for a new performing arts centre?

Pick a card. Two? Three? Four?

Or maybe none?

This week’s revelation that Thompson Rivers University wants to be considered as a potential location would seem to bring the number to three: the Hotel 540, the Kamloops Daily News building, and TRU.

But that’s deceiving. The TRU option is tentative at this point, despite an indication of strong support from the university’s board of governors.

Besides a number of council members publicly expressing their doubts, the reaction behind the scenes hasn’t been positive.

One member of the City’s performing arts theatre committee told me a letter from TRU Community Trust chair Frank Quinn (published elsewhere in today’s A.M. News) outlining TRU’s desire to be considered wasn’t positively received. In fact, it was described as ruffling feathers.

Another committee member was even more strident.

“It’s not convenient,” the committee member said. “It’s way the hell out there and I can’t think of a worse place to put it.”

So, I doubt it will get very far. That would leave the Hotel 540 and the KDN.

Both of them have challenges.

The Hotel 540 idea would require a P3, or public-private partnership. That’s where private investment is used to reduce the costs to the public. Typically, one party pays all or most of the capital costs and the other runs the facility.

The City has avoided P3s in the past. For example, 14 years ago there was a plan for a P3 to build a convention centre. The City and the developer eventually backed away.

A P3 was broached for the water treatment plant a decade ago but the City said no to that, too. Private operation and even ownership of Interior Savings Centre has been bandied about for years but it remains a City owned and operated facility. (The City did enter a public-public partnership with TRU on the Tournament Capital Centre.)

Arriving at a deal for a performing arts centre that would retain reasonable control and revenue opportunities for the City, and be politically palatable, would be a hurdle.

The other possibility, the Daily News building, has the advantage of now being owned by the City, but it wasn’t purchased with a performing arts centre in mind. Its footprint is restrictive, and it happens to be in a highly congested traffic area. Its major access point, Seymour Street, is one way.

The Henry Grube Education Centre? It’s been brushed off at City Hall on the grounds the school district wants to keep it, but you may or may not remember the words of superintendent Terry Sullivan in these pages a few weeks ago: “They’d have to make us a significant offer.”

Bringing the Grube centre back into the picture, though, would require a radical shift in thinking at City Hall, which is determined to put a performing arts centre downtown.

Stuart Wood? Great location, but any thought of bulldozing a beloved designated heritage structure would be akin to political immolation.

In fall, council will hire a consultant from among the contenders who will then take $260,000 and spend it looking at what a performing arts centre should include and where it should be built.

It will, no doubt, outline the pros and cons of each site, after which council might find there are more cons than pros to any of them.

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