The Chair of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts Society says the project isn’t dead, it is just on pause.

Norm Daley says a lot of people are being impacted by COVID-19 and although the arts centre isn’t top of mind today, the society wants to keep moving forward and revisit it at an appropriate time.

“And we’re talking about what opportunities we have and when would there be an opportunity to move forward, I think that’s quite a ways away yet. And we’re trying to engage with the membership because we did get over 5,000 people signed up as members and we’re trying to engage with them and kind of asking them, what do they see as the purpose of the society.”

Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, Daley says that he is disappointed that a lot of work such as the business case can’t simply be pushed ahead, but he hopes there will be some of that planning that can be used down the road.

“Obviously that has to be tempered with what’s going on in the world. I think in the short term there is the potential to resurrect a lot of the work that was done before. It maybe doesn’t have the meaning that it had six months ago, but really it’s the time factor of when this can be resurrected that will determine that.”

The April 4th referendum was cancelled due to COVID-19 and Daley says it will likely take some time before the community would be willing to entertain the idea of such a large project. He says there has not been any thought to this point about when the project may even be considered again.

“Even if we’re coming out of the COVID crisis in the next few months, it’s probably not the appropriate time to bring this to the community again. So, we did have that conversation that we just felt it wasn’t the right time to be working on it.”