On Friday, the Vancouver Art Gallery held a “ground awakening” ceremony on the plot of city-owned land – currently a parking lot – that will house the new gallery. It was a moving, feel-good event, with the Premier, mayor, philanthropists and other dignitaries giving dreamy, optimistic speeches.
“The future is right here under our feet,” board chair David Calabrigo told the audience.
Also on Friday, the gallery announced that it has raised more than $340-million of its $400-million fundraising target – a cool 85 per cent.
But come Monday, officials were meeting to discuss ways of altering the design in order to keep the project on budget.
That $400-million figure cited by VAG officials for two years has been the target of justified skepticism and even quiet ridicule. Construction costs – including for labour and materials – have skyrocketed along with inflation, so sticking with the same dollar figure seems ludicrous. This is a particular problem for this taxpayer-funded project, which has been criticized in the past for a lack of transparency.
So to rejoice at raising 85 per cent of what feels like an impossible $400-million budget seems somewhat dubious.
Here’s the less-advertised news: Rather than try to raise more money to construct the facility as planned, VAG officials are doing the more responsible thing: cutting costs. The original vision for the new building is no longer feasible.
“In the last weeks and months, we have reduced the scope of the project,” VAG CEO and executive director Anthony Kiendl said in an interview on Monday, during a break from discussions. “That redesign is happening live right now.”
Some things will have to go. Some have already gone, including the third underground level and the extra beyond-code parking spots that went with it. This is good for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that the site is steps from a SkyTrain station.
The building’s planned ninth storey has also been axed. The footprints for the restaurant and administrative offices have been reduced.
Other possibilities being debated include altering materials, perhaps switching out the exterior’s planned red cedar to hemlock, which is much cheaper.
There are four areas Mr. Kiendl says are sacrosanct must-haves, though: showcasing art and artists (doubling the exhibition space to 80,000 square feet); community learning (multiple classrooms are part of the design – the current site only has one); environmental responsibility (a “carbon-resilient” design); and Indigenous culture. The Coast Salish-inspired weaving pattern on the building’s exterior, designed in collaboration with First Nations artists, is a must.
“And then we have to make some really difficult decisions,” Mr. Kiendl said.
Work is set to begin soon. Months of soil remediation will be necessary; there is contamination because of the site’s former use as a bus depot. The current projected opening date is 2028 – almost 100 years after the first Vancouver Art Gallery, a single-storey building, opened in 1931 down the street. (The gallery is now housed in a renovated former courthouse, a few blocks away.)
Even with the current budget, there is still a lot of money to be raised; $60-million is nothing to sneeze at.
The province has given $100-million, the city has donated the land (currently valued at $110-million), while the federal government has coughed up $29.3-million. At Friday’s event, there was much focus on that comparatively paltry figure. Liberal MP Hedy Fry promised to fight for more; philanthropist Michael Audain (who has given $100-million to the project) quoted Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, asking for more, “please sir.”
This played well with the friendly audience of artists, patrons and other liberal pro-art-funding types, who laughed along and applauded.
But good luck. One can only imagine what Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre might say about the Trudeau government dumping millions of additional dollars into a Swiss-designed art gallery of all things.
And no matter your political bent, it’s not going to be an easy sell. A new art gallery? In this economy?
To put the project on pause would not make financial sense, Mr. Kiendl says. With cost escalation, expenses could outpace donations. He offered an example: If it takes six months to raise $20-million but construction costs have gone up by $18-million in that period, it doesn’t do the gallery much good. “That’s why truly the time is now,” he said.
It is time. The VAG is doing the right thing by cutting costs and altering the design rather than stretching itself too thin to build a shiny bauble that is beyond taxpayer means.
We can live without extra parking, with less expensive building materials, a smaller restaurant.
But Vancouver should not have to live without a proper art gallery.
Marsha Lederman