The Vancouver Art Gallery’s (VAG) trouble raising the money necessary to build a new art gallery has not softened Vancouver city council’s support for the institution or its expansion plans.
The city had imposed an April 2015 deadline for the gallery to raise $200 million in government funding in order to have a 99-year lease and build the new gallery on the southern two-thirds of the city’s Larwill Park site, which is bounded by Cambie, Dunsmuir, Beatty and Georgia streets.
But that deadline came and went without the city taking any action.
On December 14, city council finally confirmed its support for the project by unanimously extending the gallery’s deadline to raise the necessary money to December 31, 2018.
“Council has supported the gallery’s initiative for some time and there was every reason to continue the support and no reason not to continue the support,” said Coun. Geoff Meggs.
So far the gallery has raised only $73 million: $50 million in 2008 from the provincial government and $23 million last year from its 20-member board of directors.
In order to build a new gallery, which is expected to cost $300 million and require at least a $50 million endowment in order to be sustainable, the expectation is that the federal government would kick in $100 million and that the provincial government would contribute a second $50 million donation.
Public and corporate donations would then provide the rest of the needed funding.
Neither the federal nor the provincial government has said that it is willing to ante up cash to build the new gallery. Corporate executives have also been silent on the matter.
Macdonald Development owner and former VAG building committee member Rob Macdonald told Business in Vancouver that the gallery’s current strategy of getting government and corporate donations is set up to fail.
“There’s no money,” he said. “If you don’t have a funding formula, the whole discussion is a waste of time.”
Macdonald favours a concept whereby the city would allow two towers to be built on the southern two-thirds of the Larwill Park site.
The city could then sell to developers the density sufficient to build those towers for what Macdonald estimated could be more than $536.6 million.
The city would then contribute about $300 million to build a new gallery, which could be on the site, and have enough left over for a $150 million endowment fund to cover operating losses.
In 2009, he took an early draft of that proposal to the VAG board and to Mayor Gregor Robertson and Robertson’s former chief of staff, Mike Magee, but Macdonald said Robertson and Magee were not interested.
Headway is being made on the proposal to build a new gallery, according to the VAG’s director of communications, Johanie Marcoux.
“There’s been great progress on the design front as we concluded the schematic design phase in June,” she said, referring to the concept of a 310,000-square-foot, wooden building designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron with help from local partners at Perkins+Will.
The designs envisage a stacked-block structure with about 85,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is more than double what the gallery currently uses at its site at Robson Square. It would also have a ground-level courtyard and a 350-seat auditorium.
“There’s a lot of confidential information and we’re preparing to release some of that information in February,” Marcoux said.
“We are still in the quiet phase of the capital campaign and we are tremendously energized by the strong support and encouragement we are receiving locally and from across the country."
She would not say whether any funding agreements are likely to be announced in February but confirmed that VAG representatives are in contact with federal and provincial government representatives. •
