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PrintMayor Wayne Wright opposes spending millions of city tax dollars to upgrade Massey Theatre
New Westminster mayor Wayne Wright says the school board will have to find a solution for the Massey Theatre.
The mayor of New Westminster, Wayne Wright, doesn't anticipate that his city government will spend $18 million to save the Massey Theatre.
In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Wright said the 1,260-seat venue's future is in the hands of its owner, the New Westminster school district.
"They have to come up with some solutions," Wright said.
Late last month, the school board received a report from Atelier Pacific Architects, which suggested it would cost $18.2 million to upgrade the 60-year-old theatre.
"They've told us it's an $18-million fixup bill," Wright said. "We don't have $18 million to spend on it."
The chair of the school board, James Janzen, told the Straight early last week that the district needs to build a new high school on the large block, which includes the Massey Theatre, a skate park, and Mercer Stadium. The city owns about half the site, including the stadium.
New Westminster secondary school is out of date, and it sits on top of unmarked graves of former residents, including many Chinese pioneers.
Janzen said that the school board is talking to the city about possibly swapping land so the new high school could be built in the same block without demolishing the Massey Theatre. This would require moving the sports field to a different location on the site.
Wright, however, said he has heard that soil conditions beneath Mercer Stadium make it an inappropriate location for a new school. He said there are similar difficulties with the soil beneath the skate park.
Wright sounded insistent that city taxpayers won't be on the hook for massive repairs to the theatre. "Everything is substandard," he said of the building. "It's pretty hard to know what you're going to do with that."
Earlier this month, Massey Theatre Society executive director Jessica Schneider told the Straight that she wants to lay to rest any belief that it's not a safe, functional, viable theatre.
"It's unique in the region," Schneider said. "It has huge potential that has been mired in these issues forever."
The mayor also mentioned that the operators of the Massey Theatre have suggested that the $18-million cost of upgrading the building is an exaggeration. Wright added that he doesn't expect that the city would spend even $9 million to save the building.
A new civic centre in downtown New Westminster will include a theatre with 400 to 500 seats, Wright said. (A 2008 city-commissioned report mentioned that the civic centre would have a theatre with 300 to 400 seats. That report also emphasized the importance of retaining the Massey Theatre.)
Wright noted that the new high school, which could be built on the Massey Theatre site, will include a 600-seat theatre. "So we're actually going to have two brand-new theatres in the city," he said.
Comments
Please save our Massey!
The Massey is being used as a pawn in a long, drawn-outCity/School Board/Province/developers land swap. There is really nothing wrong with the building. It is almost certainly safer than the ones most of us are sitting in right now.
The premise of the second study is that the building needs to be brought up to the standards that would apply to new construction, but as the Risk Assessment report states, that is an option, not a requirement.
"A general review of the NWSS Massey Theater to analyze the general fire and life safety of the building has been completed. It is found that the general fire and life safety aspects of the building while deficient, are in reasonable condition when compared to similar buildings of its age. As a first step to improving the level of fire and life safety of the building, the implementation of at least the operational level procedures is recommended."
The 18 million is what it would cost to bring the building up to the standards that would be imposed on new construction, as cited in the Building Assessment Report. It includes 13 million for seismic upgrades. Now, how many schools is it, that have been waiting how many years, for seismic upgrades?
There is no requirement whatsoever for anybody to do anything to that building. It has simply become a football in a long, drawn-out game of "land swap" being played by the City, the School Board, the developers, and the provincial government.
The use to which this second
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