Image Credit: CHP Architects

By James Peters

Kamloops Centre for the Arts

City of Kamloops staff, councillors say mayor’s effort to pause or relocate arts centre project are impossible

Nov 26, 2025 | 3:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — As officials break ground on the Kamloops Centre for the Arts Wednesday (Nov. 26), City of Kamloops staff say there’s no practical way to either pause or move the project.

At Tuesday’s Governance and Service Excellence Committee meeting, staff and councillors set aside time to correct what they termed ‘misinformation’ being spread by Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson about the arts centre project.

On CFJC Today last week, Hamer-Jackson suggested the project be paused in order to ease an escalating tax burden for local residents.

Committee members emphasized the arts centre project, in and of itself, is already too far down the road to pause — and pausing it would have no impact on the 2026 budget and tax rate.

“There is no impact on the 2026 tax rate because of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts. That cannot be clearer,” said Councillor Katie Neustaeter. “If there’s one message we want the community to hear, it’s that, although those were presented in the same [meeting], kind of at the same time, there’s been a lot of confusion and cloudiness around that.”

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Hamer-Jackson also threw out a $500-million estimate for how much the project could eventually cost with potential overruns. Communications Manager Kristen Rodrigue says that would be impossible.

“The way we cost out this project includes all potential risks,” Rodrigue told the committee. “We look at any risk we may come across during the construction process, we accommodate, allow for it and budget for it. This project will not hit $500 million. There is no way we hit that number.”

The mayor has also proposed building an arts centre on a city-owned site on River Street, near the Kamloops Yacht Club. Civic Operations Director Jen Fretz frankly pointed out the barriers preventing that from happening.

“At a very basic level, there’s not enough room between the road and the river to build any kind of facility, anything of any size — especially when it comes to the Kamloops Centre for the Arts,” said Fretz, who also noted the significant utilities buried underground that would be encountered if the city moved the roadway to make space. Huge sewer and water trunks pass beneath River Street, servicing large portions of the city.

“At the very start, there’s not enough room. If we were try to make more room, we’re talking about massive, massive costs for relocation of underground infrastructure just as a beginning — let alone flood plain and dikes and all of that sort of thing,” said Fretz.

“There is no consideration — or way of considering — moving this project, stopping this project without incurring millions of additional costs in order to do that,” added Neustaeter. “Not just in contracts that are in place — because again, this project is not at Point ‘A’, this project is [close to] Point ‘Z’. It is happening. It is moving ahead. There is no pause, there is no move, at this point.”