[Langford] Pacific Maritime Centre | Maritime Museum of BC; office; commercial | Proposed

The Maritime Museum of BC has pulled out over finances:

 

The Maritime Museum of BC has made the decision to withdraw from the cultural development plans known as the Pacific Maritime Centre with the City of Langford. The unprecedented situation with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created an economic climate that no longer makes it possible for the Museum to proceed.

 

“I want to take this opportunity to thank Mayor Young and Langford council for their tremendous support of the Maritime Museum of BC,” said Jamie Webb, President of the Museum. “Langford offered the Museum land and municipal staff support in the effort to provide the Museum with a permanent home. Langford’s innovative and bold approach to this development is greatly appreciated.’

 

“The City of Langford looked forward to welcoming the Maritime Museum to Langford, however we understand and support their decision to seek out a waterfront location.” said Mayor Young. “We wish them all the best with this project moving forward.”

 

Like many other non-profits, the Museum has felt the strain of the pandemic and has had to focus on maintaining their operations. The Museum believes in Langford’s bold vision to develop a cultural complex that includes a performing arts centre and strongly supports them in this initiative.

 

Since the pandemic hit in March 2020 the Maritime Museum of BC has shifted its programming online and has created new digital exhibits. While those virtual initiatives have been successful, the Museum is looking forward to a post-COVID tourism boom and welcoming more visitors back into the city. In the meantime, the Museum Board is actively seeking opportunities for a new museum location in downtown Victoria, ideally on the harbour.

I can't get too upset about this decision.

I can't get too upset about this decision.

 

Nope not at all; the CoV needs to get its s*** together and do whatever it takes working with senior governments to make sure the MM not only stays in the core but ideally is sited, you know....on the water (or very close to it), where most maritime museums are typically found. See Halifax for an excellent example of how to do it right.

If not on the water (which would be ideal), perhaps the Maritime Museum could be housed in the Telus Ocean's ground floor. At least the name would make sense.

Interesting how the museum positioned this as finances/Covid related while Young framed it as wanting a waterfront location. What’s the real reason for the change of heart? Did the museum come to it senses after wasting time going through this process? Was it a calculated bluff? Have they been approached as part of a major proposal that we may see come to light within the next year for the Inner Harbour, Capital Iron waterfront, Rock Bay or perhaps as part of the Ogden Point redevelopment? Will this be announced later this summer as the provincial government rolls outs a 250 million dollar investment fund to reignite the tourism sector? Am I just making things up on the fly?

Three will be no Maritime Museum downtown.  The Maritime Museum is the epitome of colonialism bringing whites to native lands.  Like the friction of the "Royal BC Museum", just think of the name....BC.....Royal....and even Museum.  All things to be hated.    

Nothing a rebranding can’t fix. The Anti-Colonial Maritime Museum. Where replicas of settler ships are burnt to the water before they can land - à la Inglorious Bastards.

Another possibility - the museum partners with the local First Nations to co-present their maritime history, that would be cool! And launch tours from a waterfront site.

Interesting how the museum positioned this as finances/Covid related while Young framed it as wanting a waterfront location. What’s the real reason for the change of heart? Did the museum come to it senses after wasting time going through this process? Was it a calculated bluff? Have they been approached as part of a major proposal that we may see come to light within the next year for the Inner Harbour, Capital Iron waterfront, Rock Bay or perhaps as part of the Ogden Point redevelopment? Will this be announced later this summer as the provincial government rolls outs a 250 million dollar investment fund to reignite the tourism sector? Am I just making things up on the fly?

 

On FB I suggested perhaps siting the MM on the Ogden Pt lands as well but have to wonder with the uncertainty surrounding the return of cruising to the city, if that OP master re-development plan isn't also on indefinite hold or even cancelled. I would think Ship Point would also be a prime consideration for a maritime museum but regardless in the age of covid I have to think available $$$ from senior governments in a possible partnership will be scarce to non-existent.

Even without cruising returning, Ogden point makes a lot of sense to me.

But again, the Maritime Museum of BC will be in direct competition with the Vancouver Maritime Museum for any Provincial and Federal funding. Vancouver's museum has been talking about a move from Kits into Coal Harbour as part of the redevelopment of the Westin Bayshore property.

...the Maritime Museum of BC will be in direct competition with the Vancouver Maritime Museum for any Provincial and Federal funding...

This is just what you have to expect when you're the redheaded stepchild of public funding.

This was a ridiculous idea to begin with ... a museum connected to a 1200 seat theatre, neither of the two having a penny to rub between them.

 

This was the plan for the "arts centre" in Langford going down the tubes, and the next one to go down the drain will be the same basic concept recently announced in Colwood.

 

Doing a nice painting up of an "arts centre", and hoping some level of government is going to just give any of the Western Communities 40 to 80m million dollars to build it is a pipe dream ... it's a very common pipe dream, but it's a pipe dream nonetheless.

 

Arts Centres are conceived and built by professionals in the arts community, people who actually know what they're doing, have funding sources lined up prior to announcing anything, and (most importantly) have a 20-30 year business plan that describes in detail how this Arts Centre is going to sustain itself without becoming a massive burden on the taxpayer.

 

The Langford proposal had no acceptable business plan in place ... and the reason the Colwood Arts Centre is next for the chopping block is because they too have failed to demonstrate anything even close to a  workable business plan.

Wikipedia's definition of a cargo cult is a fairly decent match for the Maritime Museum's approach to finding a new space: 

 

 

 

A cargo cult is a millenarian belief system in which adherents perform rituals which they believe will cause a more technologically advanced society to deliver goods.

 

When they got kicked  out of the courthouse, I recall they were talking about some agreement from the seventies that required either the province or the city or somebody to provide them with a new space. No one could find it though, so that went nowhere. Then they were going to move into the ground floor of the Steamship Terminal, and it sounded like almost a done deal until it wasn't. Then years of nothing, and then a proposal to move to Langford that was so bizarre it reminded everyone of a different Simpsons episode. Mine was the one where Flanders' neighbours get together to build him a house, and the proportions turned out all weird.

 

It's a shame, because they really do have a good collection.

Edited by sablefish, 01 April 2021 - 10:56 PM.

Here's a suggestion - get a huge tent and move to Beacon Hill. I hear the Wax Museum has already set up not far from the petting zoo. Ok, they've run into a few problems with their people melting a bit after 'cooking’ accidents. On the bright side reports indicate their John A MacDonald has yet been beheaded, although he has given up the whiskey in favour of crystal meth. No doubt haunted by his memory of a trip to London:

”And while there is, of course, no detailed record of just how much Sir John A. had been drinking that night, it seems very likely that alcohol helped lure him into an early sleep.

He woke to the smell of his own burning flesh. He’d passed out while reading the paper and the candle tipped over, setting the room ablaze. The curtains, the sheets and blankets, even the pillow beneath his head and the nightshirt he was wearing were all in flames. Just months before he became the first Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald was on fire.”

http://spacing.ca/to...d-drunk-flames/