The City of Kamloops is in the process of finding companies that are interested in designing and building the long-awaited and sometimes controversial Centre for the Arts downtown.
Capital Projects Manager Matt Kachel says it comes after Council approved the spending $7 million so staff could complete the validation and detailed design work for the project back in February.
Kachel tells Radio NL the City will be building off of the work that was done by the Fawcett family to get the project – which is slated to rise at 4th Avenue and St. Paul Street – to a shovel-ready state.
“So the work that was done previously was figuring out the ideal size of each theatre and what the layout of the building was going to be with the users groups,” Kachel said.
“That was all thankfully done and now its really just preparing the details plans and costing them out so that we know what construction looks like and we can share that with council and see what the options are from there and what they would like to do.”
The latest cost estimates put the Centre for the Arts project – which was identified as the top priority in the Recreation Master Plan – in the neighbourhood of $120 million, based on 2023 unit rates. It is up about $50-million from the previous proposal of $70-million, which was set to go to a referendum on Apr. 4, 2020, but it was postponed because of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kachel says the City expects to have a general contractor picked by August, designers picked by November, and the builders picked by January of next year.
The successful companies would join the Integrated Project Delivery team, which includes the City of Kamloops and Station One Architects, who were previously working on the project under the direction of the Fawcett family.
“Part of that methodology is to bring in the major engineers and trades people that would be able to help us develop that design and that budget,” Kachel said.
“Our first RFP that is out is for the general contractor, and that will be followed by the major sub-trades and the engineers soon after wrapping up towards the end of the year.”
Kachel says the validation and detailed design work is not expected to be affected by Tuesday’s release of more details on what Build Kamloops will look like and how projects – like the arts centre and a new ice complex – will be paid for.
“We’ve been given X amount of dollars to complete a task and we would still finish that task and ideally the next piece, which is construction gets approved and we can just move forward,” Kachel said.
“But if that doesn’t happen, we would still have full design completed if it did go forward a little bit later. The longer it sits the more updates the plan will need but at this point I’m not sure what that will look like because I think the approval will come in the midst of what we’re doing.”
Kachel says if all goes well the validation and detailed design work is expected to be done by June of 2026. It remains to be seen when construction could begin,
Build Kamloops also includes a new leisure pool on the North Shore, a large curling club facility to accommodate consolidation of the two curling clubs, new indoor field space, and a new all-ages community centre.
It may also include housing in some of those facilities, if it is found to be feasible.