Council commits $5M for new waterfront art gallery

Last night, city councillors in Thunder Bay committed to spending $5 million on a new waterfront art gallery, if the provincial and federal governments also help out.

The estimated total cost of the new facility could run as high as $33 million. There have been no commitmentsofadditional funding from either federal or provincial coffers.

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CouncillorRebecca Johnson supported the city's funding, which would be a debenture taken out over ten years.

She says it's a big amount, but would be well spent.

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"Looking at what we want as a community, and the future of our community, we need to look beyond the fact of just roads and bridges and all those kinds of things," Johnson said. "We need to be looking at what we need to be attracting people here."

The city will also pay to remediate the land where the gallery would be built at Prince Arthur's Landing, which administration expects to range between $2 and $4 million, Johnson said.

"If in fact the art gallery does not go through for whatever reason, they can't get all the funding, then we'll still have that remediation done for whatever we want to do with that piece of land in the future," Johnson said. "It won't be for naught."

"It's the next step in the whole waterfront development. And no matter what happens there, at least we'll be moving forward," she said.

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The gallery has been asking for a new facility since 2013, when director Sharon Godwin confirmed they wanted to leave the Confederation campus in favour of a larger waterfront home.

"We've been in this location for 40 years," she told CBC News in 2013. "We've drastically outgrown the space."

In November, the design fora proposed new 40,000 square foot,two-storeybuilding, located south of the Spirit Garden, on Tugboat Basin was revealed to city council.

The facility would include an event hall overlooking Lake Superior, a cafe and a larger gift shop, and would be more than twice the size of the gallery's current location on the Confederation College campus.