Costly parking garages and an auditorium have pushed the estimated price to build Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Station (PODS) to as high as $20 million, but executive director Michael Jackson remains optimistic that construction will start in October and reach completion by 2020.
In March, the Ruby Lake Lagoon Society invited the public to view the latest designs of PODS, drafted by architect Jeremiah Deutscher and his team. It’s the third iteration, with a final version expected early next month.
Highlights include a 200-seat auditorium equipped with green rooms and a stage large enough to fit the Coast Symphony Orchestra, and which can be separated into four 50-seat conference rooms. A large lobby will double as an exhibition space.
The structure will be tucked into the naturally terraced hillside, with three vessel-shaped buildings fronting the water at Irvines Landing. Those “pods” will house attractions for visitors, such as an aquarium, restaurant and interactive displays of the region’s history.
The construction budget was originally between $10 and $15 million, Jackson said, but the auditorium and its underground parking, with each level expected to cost $1.5 million, has increased that price. Jackson said marrying attractions, including conferences, to the site’s scientific facilities will help offset operating costs and is “absolutely key” to keeping PODS financially secure for the long term.
“You have to do all these things to get enough revenue to keep this open,” he said. “There are other examples of research centres that don’t have any of these other things and they are basically not surviving because they don’t have enough funds coming in.”
He also said the extra attractions are intended to buoy the local economy.
“The thing about conferences and corporate retreats is that they are year round. They’re not just the summer and that is a very key thing in Pender. If you’ve tried running a store in Madeira Park, it’s like Labour Day comes along and a guillotine comes down and cuts off all your revenues.”
In 2017 the Ruby Lake Lagoon Society announced it had raised the $2.4 million needed to purchase the Irvines Landing property. They received more than 400 contributions, including $30,000 from the estate of local medical doctor John Farrer as well as a major donation from a Toronto-based patron. The society is hiring consultants and engineers to put in an application for a development permit.
As the building design gets fleshed out, so is PODS’ complex business plan, which once finalized will open up more funding opportunities. “With all the different revenue streams, from nature tours to diving tours, corporate retreats, conferences, cinema, there’s a ton of different elements here,” Jackson said. Additionally, they hope to be running 12 long-term monitoring studies in the next two years thanks to a “crucial” partnership with Simon Fraser University.
Despite the big budget requirement, Jackson remains optimistic. “The Lagoon Society, since we started in 2001, has raised more than $12 million. It’s not impossible to raise large sums of money if you have a project you believe in and [that people] can see you have worked very hard to get right.”
