Will community be willing to invest in a new use for Stuart Wood?

Feb 10, 2017 | 1:39 PM

KAMLOOPS — Stuart Wood School is a good place for a museum. It would have been a good place for other things, too, but a museum is within the community’s reach when it comes to public spaces.

There are those who will object, and already have, to the cost of renovating the grand old building for a museum, just as they worried about what the cost would have been to renovate it and keep it as a school. They would prefer it be torn down because they believe that, of all the options, it would be the cheapest. And anything that saves taxes must be a good thing.

Such people suffer from a disease that causes them to lack vision. It’s degenerative and can be highly debilitating for a community, preventing it from — as educators like to put it — reaching its full potential.

Old buildings are a pain in the ass if you let them be. The wrecking ball has been the first choice for a great many heritage buildings in Kamloops, because it’s the easy, cheapest choice. We should be pleased that Stuart Wood will not be one of them, despite the inclinations of the creatively blind.

The need to find a new use for Stuart Wood didn’t exactly come as a surprise. Shutting it down as a school was foreseen long before the school board actually decided to do it. The age of the building and shifting school populations made closure, if not inevitable, a distinct possibility. At one point, back in the 1970s, only the virtual threatened lynching of school trustees by enraged parents kept it open.

Fifteen years ago, it was identified as a possible future City Hall.

It was a grand vision, if I do say so myself. Although plans never got much past the paper napkin phase, the building could have been a City Hall of which Kamloops would be proud. The ugly modern add-ons would be removed and new annexes, replicating the existing architecture, built on either end, similar in concept to the annex at the Old Courthouse.

The playground could have accommodated a small amount of public parking, the rest becoming public park.

It would have cost probably double the $5-6 million they’re talking about to renovate it for a museum. Taking such a number to a referendum would have been doomed to fail, just as the more recent Performing Arts Centre failed.

But a borrowing referendum was never in the plan. Instead, a community land reserve fund would have been created and grown over a period of 10 to 15 years as the school use wound down. Had that been done, the money would now be available.

We will, of course, probably never get a new City Hall, despite the importance of having a seat of local government that is both practical and iconic, because there’s no political will or public appetite.

And, sadly, every other major bricks-and-mortar public facility faces the same challenge.

There have been exceptions, occasional flashes of true community spirit and willingness to invest in the future — the Tournament Capital Centre, the expansion to the McArthur Island Sports and Events Centre, the Civic Building with its library and art gallery.

You could include the improvements to Royal Inland Hospital, but those are financial decisions made within government, not by the public at large. One wonders what the fate of Stuart Wood might be if it should come down to a borrowing referendum.

For now, Stuart Wood’s hallways are silent, awaiting word from the provincial government on what uses might be appropriate under the original agreement giving the City title as long as it was used for educational purposes.

Byron McCorkell, the City’s parks, recreation and culture director, is excited about the prospects for moving the museum from Seymour Street into Stuart Wood. “It needs to be a public space,” he told me Friday, and a museum works within the school’s existing footprint.

There are decisions to be made in Victoria and at City Hall before the museum idea gets real traction, but it could happen.

An existing reserve fund has several hundred thousand in the bank and could go towards getting the museum set up and running in the new quarters, with additional renos and development of the grounds a longer-term proposition.

Optimistically, senior-government grants would take care of a lot of the additional cost, and it would be tailor-made for a fundraising campaign as well, but if borrowing is needed, there’d have to be an alternative approval process (counter petition) or referendum.

And, once again, the willingness of taxpayers to invest in their community would be put to the test.