Gibsons Public Market is on track for a January 2017 opening, but representatives of the Gibsons Community Building Society told council this week that they still face a challenge – and it involves fees levied by the Town.
In a progress report at the Dec. 6 council meeting, the society’s Pam Robertson said they’ve secured about $3.2 million in funding to date, which leaves them with around $400,000 still to raise. She also said there have been cost overruns and charges from the Town that were higher than expected.
“Construction costs on the Coast have skyrocketed this year,” she said. “So we are experiencing cost overruns that have come from that pressure on the construction budget. We are putting financing in place to handle that.”
Robertson went on to explain that various services from the Town of Gibsons have come in at around $50,000 more than they’d budgeted for.
“One of the reasons that we’re here is to ask for an opportunity to meet with staff and council to talk about recovering those funds,” she said. “These are funds that we’ve paid to the Town; we’re wondering if there’s a way to have those returned to us to help with the cost overruns.”
The society’s plan is to open the Gibsons Public Market in phases starting in late January 2017 with the main and upper floors, which includes a bistro and the meeting spaces.
The main market, which will be open six days a week, is 85 per cent leased and will open in March. The community and commercial kitchens and the weekly farmers market will also open in March. Both will be on the lower level, which they’re calling the “food floor.”
Robertson said the Nicholas Sonntag Marine Education Centre (named in honour of one of the market founders, who died in 2015) will be the last to open, some time in June 2017.
The Marine Education Centre is expected to be the centrepiece of the market and a major tourist draw. Robertson told council the design follows the model of a “catch-and-release” aquarium in Ucluelet. There will be 25 live animal exhibits featuring species from Howe Sound. “They will stay with us for about four months, we will be replicating their natural habitat, and then they will be released back into the wild.”
Robertson also said that thanks to a corporate sponsor who’s come forward, the Marine Eduction Centre will include a four-metre-tall (14 ft.) cylindrical aquarium tank that can been seen from all three floors of the building.
Mayor Wayne Rowe didn’t commit to a refund or other type of relief on the costs Robertson raised, but suggested the society draft a detailed memo so Town staff can look into it.
He also offered some praise for the project as a whole, and the fundraising effort behind it. “Apart from the CT scanner at the hospital, I’ve never seen the community get behind a project to quite this extent,” Rowe said.
