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South Okanagan Photos

Museum society asks for $42 thousand to continue fund raising

Present Museum on waterfront
Present Museum on waterfront

By ROY WOOD

Despite its recent setback, the Osoyoos Museum Society is determined to press ahead with plans for a new museum on the site of the current Home Building Centre on Main Street.

Society president Mat Hassen on Tuesday asked town council for approval for $42,000 to continue fundraising and other aspects of the project. The request will go to the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen, but only after town council approves it.

The society had been proceeding with the project that would have seen it take over the building next fall and open the new museum in the spring 2017. The Home Building Centre was available because the company’s head office had planned a new store near the Osoyoos airport.

But head office decided against the new building and the local operator decided to close the store ahead of schedule and lay off staff. Negotiations involving the RDOS, the town and the Home Building Centre operator led to a new lease extending to the end of 2019.

This left the museum society with no place to go in the short term.

This “side-swiping” of the society, as Hassen called it, was a surprise and a setback, but he and his board will carry on.

The museum still has to move out of its current location in the old curling rink beside Gyro Park because the building is old and barely habitable, he said. And the Home Building Centre remains the only viable space in the town for a new museum.

“We have to stay the course,” said Hassen. “Otherwise the last seven years (working on the project) will have been for nothing.”

The society is waiting for the RDOS to sign a new lease with the Home Building Centre owners and will insist that it includes a “no-escape” clause, which will prohibit the company from reneging on its agreement to leave at the end of 2019.

“We need a legal certainty that we’ll get the building January 1, 2020,” he said.

Meanwhile, council gave its approval for the society to seek $42,000 from the reserve fund to cover ongoing fundraising activities for the new museum, continued designing the new exhibits and campaign materials that have to be revised because of the new dates.

The reserve fund includes the accumulated rent that the RDOS collects from Home Building Centre. The society is entitled to take up to $50,000 from the fund for development of the new museum.