The Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound. (Matt Hermiz/Bayshore Broadcasting News)
An expansion of the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound could cost up to $16-million.
City council reviewed a consultant’s report on potential expansion options at Monday’s meeting and unanimously passed a motion to undertake a fundraising feasibility study to find out how much money the art gallery could raise.
A Tom Thomson Art Gallery Facility Expansion Ad Hoc Committee was struck three years ago with the mandate of developing an expansion plan for the gallery at its existing location and adjacent city-owner Rice House property.
The gallery is currently around 14,000 square-feet, but its director and chief curator Aidan Ware identified in a previous report a lack of collection storage and staff space, limited permanent exhibition spaces and not enough room for other events and programming as some limitations of the 1st Avenue West building.
Two options for expansion were detailed in a report by consulting firm Diamond Schmitt and brought to council Monday. They’re both projected to cost around $16-million and would expand the size of the Tom Thomson Art Gallery by about 10,000 square feet.
Council hasn’t committed to moving ahead with an expansion, but only allowing the gallery to do a study to figure out whether such a project could be funded through grants, donations and a fundraising campaign.
But there were still some comments from a few councillors suggesting they wouldn’t support spending taxpayers’ dollars on an art gallery expansion.
Coun. Melanie Middlebro’: “Is it reasonable to spend $16-million to create event spaces that are projected to bring in revenue of $14,000 a year? Is it reasonable to spend $16-million to add storage capacity in the neighbourhood of 1,000 square-feet? And is it reasonable to spend $16-million to expand a facility that saw 14,000 total visitors last year?”
Coun. Brock Hamley: “I do agree with a lot of what Coun. Middlebro’ said … but I think at the end of the day we need to see what private dollars are out there. And I think the fundraising feasibility study will do that.”
And Deputy Mayor Scott Greig says he has some concerns about language in the report, and if the city was approving designs in the consultant’s document he would “totally concur with Coun. Middlebro’.”
But they aren’t there yet.
“We aren’t approving any capital expenditure or a $16-million budget today,” Coun. Travis Dodd explains. “What we’re doing, is saying ‘are we going to look at a feasibility study on fundraising.’ That is what we’re approving.”
The city’s director of community service Pam Coulter told councillors a pilot project this summer with “tourism at the TOM.” She says the pilot will help inform a business case that analyses the opportunity together with the Owen Sound Library and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery.