Kamloops City Council has voted to spend $7 million to complete the validation and detailed design work for the proposed Centre for the Arts downtown.

Councillor Mike O’Reilly, who chairs the Build Kamloops select committee, says this work will help firm up costs for the project, and get it to a shovel-ready state.

“What Mr. [Ron] Fawcett [of the Kelson Group] has presented is a Class “D” cost estimate,” O’Reilly said.

“What we need as a municipality to look at “shovel ready projects” when we’re looking at funding grant opportunities is a Class “A” shovel-ready project, and that is what we are looking to take this through.”

The latest estimates put the project in the neighbourhood of $120-million, which the city says will be paid through debt, as well as various government grants along with corporate and private donations.

“I think its on us to promote it as much as we can and support it as much as Mr. Fawcett and his family have,” Councillor Bill Sarai said. “It is something that we couldn’t do on our own, so I think we need to keep this train on the track its on and get it to the station.”

Councillor Katie Neustaeter also noted that the city is already looking in to what grants might be available.

“The sooner we can have these project plans so that we can move ahead with those granting opportunities, the better off we will be in the long run,” Neustaeter said.

“A lot of those pieces are coming together really nicely as we look at what we need to do to make the cost to the taxpayers as low as possible as also timing it with the alleviation of current loans that we have.”

Downtown location envisioned for Performing Arts Centre

The Centre for the Arts is slated to rise on a plot of land near Seymour Street and Fourth Avenue. It will be located next to Kelson Hall – previously the TELUS Annex building – which has been home to The Kamloops Symphony and Western Canada Theatre for a little over a year.

Its key amenity would be an 1,100-seat theatre, nearly twice the size of the 685 seat Sagebrush Theatre. The facility would also include a smaller 450-seat black box theatre space – a simple performance space similar to the Pavilion Theatre – as well as space for various local arts groups in Kamloops.

“We believe this is the right project, in the right place at the right time, and we hope that council agrees with us,” O’Reilly added, responding to questions on parking and location put forward by Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, who said on numerous instances Tuesday that he supported the project, but then voted against it.

“Has the [Build Kamloops] committee looked at the parking situation? I can go back to Sandman Centre with the parking issues that we have today when we are busy…and its cold out, people have to walk a long distance and so, we just don’t want to repeat the same thing,” Hamer-Jackson, who declined to be on the committee back in June, said.

“The other thing I wonder is if we looked at any other location in the downtown area close by, like you take down for instance on River [Street] there we’ve got about a half kilometre of property there that there could be lots of parking and things like that. I’m wondering if the committee looked at that?”

O’Reilly says the city staff are looking at parking options, which could include another level of parking in the proposed facility, private parking that could be acquired and leased out, or repurposing permit-only stalls at the Seymour Street Parkade from 24/7 to 12 hours a day, opening up more general parking outside business hours.

“When we look at location itself, as I’ve mentioned, Mr. Fawcett and the Kelson family have made a significant donation, one of the largest donations in recent memory in the TELUS Annex building today as well as the property,” O’Reilly said.

“That annex building is not only lined up to fit and integrate into new Performing Arts Centre, but it will save us $10-million when we go to build a new Performing Arts Centre.”

O’Reilly also said the plan has always been to build the new facility in the downtown core, so it could better integrate it into the city

“The Sagebrush has been fantastic since it opened in the 1970s, but it is an island on its own. There is not the economic spinoff of people coming downtown to have dinner and socialize and then go to a show and then fill the restaurants afterwards,” he said. “When we look at somewhere like a River [Street], we would be in the exact same spot as we are now, having an island facility.”

“We want to integrate this. We want it to be be part of our arts and cultural sector and core that we’ve identified through all of our city planning.”

Speaking during Tuesday’s meeting, Ron Fawcett told council that the updated conceptual design he presented was the result of over ten years of work. He also said the costs could be spread out over the estimated 50-year life of the facility, to make it more palatable to people.

“This facility will surely be a large incentive to move to Kamloops,” Fawcett added.

The City says the comprehensive conceptual design work done by the Fawcett family allows the project – which was identified as the top priority in the City’s Recreation Master Plan – to “proceed much faster than the other priorities identified for Build Kamloops.”

“The Fawcett’s have advanced the project to a point where no further progress can be made without the City moving it to the next phases, which are validation and detailed design,” Capital Project Manager Matt Kachel said last month.

City may use reserve fund to begin detail design work

City staff told the Build Kamloops Select Committee last month that they envision using short-term debt to pay for the validation and detailed design work.

“The short-term debt component will not create any impact on taxpayers today. It allows us the ability to be able to cashflow this project accordingly,” Corporate Services Director David Hallinan said.

“Should the public decide that they are all in favour of taking this program forward, we are then able to convert that short-term debt into long-term debt and package it as part of the overall project costs.”

Hallinan said Tuesday that the City could also use its capital reserve to begin the work, and then replenish that reserve using grant funding or short-term borrowing.

Ahead of his “no” vote Tuesday, Hamer-Jackson questioned why the City needed to spend $7-million on those detailed plans when the Fawcett’s “had done much of the initial design work.”

O’Reilly noted the city will use its integrated project management delivery model, saying it saved money when it was used for renovations to the Canada Games Pool at the Tournament Capital Centre.

“That came in on time and under budget, and that’s because we put the money in up front so we knew what we were getting into as a municipality,” O’Reilly said. “That made the project shovel ready, which we all know we received, I want to say, close to $10 million in grants for that.”

City staff expect that the validation work will take between three and six months, while the detailed design work will take up to a year to complete. Based on those timelines, a groundbreaking ceremony is expected to be held in the spring of 2026, with the facility poised to open its doors in 2028.

The City has also begun to gather feedback around the overall Build Kamloops plan, which also includes a new leisure pool on the North Shore, additional ice rinks, and a large curling facility to accommodate consolidation of both current curling clubs.