Bruce County council will be considering the best way to expand the museum to allow for more storage space.
Council had started discussions toward the idea of expanding the museum back in April, but had decided that rather than expanding the existing space, it would be advantageous to lease or build an off-site storage facility.
Museum Director Cathy McGirr says that the issue is more than just storage. She says that the museum also needs space for staff to complete their work, and there should also be space for volunteers and researchers to come in and access materials, including the archives.
“One component of an expansion is storage, yes, but the other component is the actual ability for staff to complete work that currently we do not have the space and the areas to complete that work. Digitization is a perfect example of that. And also our research room in terms of servicing the researchers and volunteers that come in and do the work to make the collections accessible. So there is a storage component to this project, but there’s also a service component to the project as well.”
With the report presented to council, the estimated cost for an expansion of a proposed 12,000 square feet would cost $760 per square foot, coming to a minimum cost of $9,120,000. The report also proposed that the cost be covered by transferring $285,000 in budget surplus to a reserve fund each year, from 2025-2031, which would equal $1,995,000 toward the total cost.
A majority of council didn’t feel as though the expansion should have such a high price tag, which is why they favoured the idea of focusing less on expansion and more on moving storage off-site.
Councillors Jay Kirkland, Steve Hammell, and Milt McIver each proposed alternatives, including using a building on existing county land to become de facto storage, leasing a facility to be used for the necessary storage, or building a new, smaller facility, specifically with artifact storage in mind.
Hammell suggested using the Bruce County Heritage Farm, which is located south of Paisley and can be in partnership with the Bruce County Heritage Association.
McGirr explained that “We have had preliminary conversations with the BCHA, the challenge there is that how they would store artifacts is at a different standard than what the county would be held to for that accountability piece, in order to secure and maintain the funding that we do get through the community operating museum grant…a little bit different in scope in terms of responsibility for the collections that we care for on behalf of the county, including municipal records. So there could be opportunities for future partnerships, but they would have to be scoped further to make sure that our responsibilities are foremost protected as well.”
Both Kirkland and McIver voiced concerns that if staff was advised to go forward with a complete expansion, then it would be more that what is required, and therefore more of a cost than taxpayers were willing to pay for.
Deputy Warden Luke Charbonneau suggested that staff work to nurture a partnership to help construct a facility, perhaps in the southern part of the county that was efficient and usable. He also mentioned that putting it further from the museum’s Southampton location could even benefit residents of the county.
“We have to open the franchise up here to look beyond the Southampton location for an appropriate partner to work with to get this done. I think the idea that’s been raised by a couple of my colleagues here of having access to the museum in the southern part of the county is a good thing. I think that that’s a policy that the council should probably adopt so that more people across the county can have closer access at hand to archives and the history of the county. I think there’s opportunities to have partnerships in the coming few years to do that. So my suggestion would be that we direct staff to broaden its review beyond the museum expansion project work that’s been done so far, to look further at other partnerships across the county that we could forge to build museum space inland or in the southern part of the county to accommodate both our archive’s needs and to give access to the public to museum services in other parts of Bruce County.”
The initial presentation had the motion that council direct staff to complete a financial analysis and develop a detailed budget and plan for the project, which was defeated. Council instead chose to direct staff to explore partnerships for locations within the inland or southern portions of the county as well as the current location for the museum and report back to council at a later date.