The following article appeared in the July 13 edition of the Guelph Tribune:
It appears the fate of the historic Loretto convent will be in city council’s hands Monday night when it votes on whether to approve relocating the Guelph Civic Museum to the convent.
The issue goes to council after a unanimous vote by a council committee Wednesday in favour of moving the museum there.
The board’s chair, Ian Brown, said the issue has a political aspect, in that the Diocese of Hamilton isn’t willing to let the convent be used for any purpose aside from a museum.
If council doesn’t back the museum relocation to Catholic Hill, “then definitely the convent will come down,” Brown told the committee.
The idea of moving the museum to the convent arose after the diocese applied in early 2004 to demolish the convent.
Brown took issue with media suggestions that it would cost the city less to move the museum to the current main library building on Norfolk Street, if a new headquarters library is built elsewhere downtown.
The cost of doing this hasn’t been studied, but extensive renovations to the library would be needed to turn it into a museum, including installing a much bigger elevator, he said.
In terms of net cost to the city, it “might cost the same amount of money” to move the museum to the library or to the convent, he said.
The estimated cost of moving the museum to the convent is now $13 million, but the net cost to the city is estimated at about $7 million. Museum officials hope a federal grant of up to $4.3 million will be obtained, along with $1 million from the province and close to $500,000 from the sale of the museum’s current building at 6 Dublin St.
To secure the grant under the federal Cultural Spaces Canada program, a long-term lease agreement between the city and the Diocese of Hamilton is needed before October. The project would need to start in 2008 and be largely completed by early 2010, as the federal program will end then.
The motion backed Wednesday directs city staff to negotiate a long-term lease with the diocese for use of the convent. The lease would be conditional on the city getting federal funding. The motion also moves up the project, which is currently in the city’s capital budget forecast for 2011.
The project is “very high on the radar” of provincial Minister of Culture Caroline Di Cocco, museum director Katherine McCracken told the committee. If council backs the project, city staff will go back to the province seeking money, she said.
Brown said the $1-million figure for the hoped-for provincial contribution comes from “looking at what the province has put into similar projects.”
The diocese is willing to give the city a long-term convent lease – likely 50 to 100 years – for a token payment.
“Have you ever been offered a free building before?” asked Coun. June Hofland.
No, Brown replied. “We see it as a real advantage to have this site for free,” he said, estimating it would normally cost about $200,000 a year to lease this much space.
The museum, which has 11,000 square feet of space now, needs 21,000 square feet, he said. The size of the convent is in the 20,000 to 24,000 square foot range.
Plans to turn the convent into a museum involve some demolition at the convent site and construction of some new space, Brown said, resulting in a total of 27,000 square feet of space. The extra space could be used for storage of museum artifacts until it’s needed for other museum purposes, he said.
In April, the diocese sent a letter to Mayor Karen Farbridge asking the city to take over control of the convent property, because of concerns related to maintaining insurance, vandalism and associated potential liabilities.
Voting to back the project were Hofland, Farbridge and councillors Maggie Laidlaw and Vicki Beard.