thommyjo
Senior Member
Definitely good neighbors to make that an easy proposal with no push back
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Old Royal Alberta Museum
- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
BrettB
Active Member
I must be missing something. I think demolition is the right call. I haven't been by there for a while, but the building never struck me as particularly interesting, certainly had no street presence, and it seems reasonable to turn it into green space given the cost of repurposing it. Government House will remain there. Maybe green space will make it even more prominent.
IanO
Superstar
Mr. Carruther's neighbourhood.Definitely good neighbors to make that an easy proposal with no push back
Coprolite
Active Member
It's a gem in terms of aesthetics from certain angles (not the street side, definitely), especially if you like the upscale shopping mall look. It was never a gem in terms of function.
It is both built in a fashion where it's going to be challenging to modify it into something other than a museum, and a building that was pretty bad at actually fulfilling the functions of.a museum. Its back of house facilities were primitive. It was designed with no thought of how to renew exhibits, so we were stuck with all of those weird 1950ish sculptures of what people in 1902 thought dinosaurs looked like long after the RTMP opened and that research shifted to them, and there was no capacity to ever do much more than shoehorn content from the Quaternary environments research team into an alcove.
Its climate control is primitive and inefficient. It has asbestos, a big old mould problem, and it's hugely inefficient to operate it. Changing that is going to be a lot of money. So will catching up on deferred maintenance. So will making it into anything else.
I liked the brass, the wood, and the ordovician fossiliferous limestone in the entry, but I'd cheerfully see them become part of something else.
Coprolite
Active Member
Interestingly, Government House used to have some rather amazing gardens. These got demolished to make a parking lot for the museum.
TAS
Senior Member
Saturday's letters: Wasted opportunity for old museum
Edmonton Journal readers speak out on demolishing former Royal Alberta Museum and prejudice at the Olympics
edmontonjournal.com
"The University of Alberta approached the province with a proposal to take over the empty space at the museum. They wanted to utilize the museum buildings to display the many U of A artifacts which are currently spread all over the campus in multiple locations. The province, led by Alison Redford, completely rejected the U of A proposal, giving it no consideration whatsoever."
Gronk!
Senior Member
I'm curious to know if the U of A approached the Alberta NDP when they were the provincial government from 2015 to 2019.
Coprolite
Active Member
I would take the notion that this actually happened with a huge grain of salt. Dr. Phillip J. Currie suggested the idea at one point, but he doesn't exactly speak for the U of A and there doesn't seem to be anything to suggest that U of A ever got on board with the idea, and this is just the Letters section. It's highly vulnerable to being informed by a misremembered recollection of something Dr. Currie said in an article years ago.Saturday's letters: Wasted opportunity for old museum
Edmonton Journal readers speak out on demolishing former Royal Alberta Museum and prejudice at the Olympics
"The University of Alberta approached the province with a proposal to take over the empty space at the museum. They wanted to utilize the museum buildings to display the many U of A artifacts which are currently spread all over the campus in multiple locations. The province, led by Alison Redford, completely rejected the U of A proposal, giving it no consideration whatsoever."
There's also a number of practical reasons why U of A wouldn't want it.
Coprolite
Active Member
No. I was working at the Heritage Division of Alberta Culture and Tourism at the time, and retained significant connections to Anthropology and Earth Sciences at University of Alberta. There was never an inkling of a suggestion of this during that timeframe despite regular updates on the wind down of the old site and eventual opening of the new site (including back of house updates).
Actually, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the U of A or U of A Museums EVER approached the province about it. One particular professor suggested the idea, and "his" collections are of the sort which are reasonably insensitive to humidity and temperature. Many aspects of U of A Museums' collections would've required a substantial upgrade to the climate control system to safely store at the old RAM, which is why they're dispersed among various specialized storage facilities. This was a big part of why the RAM opted for a new site, since back in 2006 upgrades to collections management including climate control priced at $200 million, without any expansion of space.
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Offworld
New Member
Saturday's letters: Wasted opportunity for old museum
Edmonton Journal readers speak out on demolishing former Royal Alberta Museum and prejudice at the Olympics
"The University of Alberta approached the province with a proposal to take over the empty space at the museum. They wanted to utilize the museum buildings to display the many U of A artifacts which are currently spread all over the campus in multiple locations. The province, led by Alison Redford, completely rejected the U of A proposal, giving it no consideration whatsoever."
I immediately switch off when I see people write in loaded absolutes, no matter the matter or cause.
kcantor
Senior Member
Does that mean you switched off the announcement to demolish because it was loaded with conjecture presented as absolute?
The announcement said it will cost $150M to repurpose the building but that includes $75M in deferred maintenance of which as much as 2/3 or $50M might not be required if repurposed. It said demolition could cost up to $50M. Which means repurposing the building for $75M or less would make better sense financially than demolishing it.
$75M is roughly $375 psf based on an estimated 200,000 of space. I would imagine that many of the potential repurposing options could be delivered for much less than that and for much less than a purpose built new building elsewhere and those savings should also be part of this equation.
All of the above anlso ignores the heritage and the emotional values of repurposing vs demolishing as well as the social value of not sending thousands of tons of demolition material to the land fill and those amounts should be part of the equation as well.
davcocom
Active Member
There's an ongoing petition asking the GofA not to tear it down
kcantor
Senior Member
^
That petition was started on March 6, 2016.
That is not a reason not to sign it but if this government has yet to pay attention, I have reservations over whether they’ll pay any more attention to this one than the myriad others that have failed from their putting ideology ahead of good decisions…
That petition was started on March 6, 2016.
That is not a reason not to sign it but if this government has yet to pay attention, I have reservations over whether they’ll pay any more attention to this one than the myriad others that have failed from their putting ideology ahead of good decisions…
Offworld
New Member
I'm absolutely on the side of repurposing, not demolition. I'm with you there, trust me. Sometimes, the lowest cost option is not the way to go, and this could be one such example where the lowest cost option may not be the best answer.
I suppose what I'm meaning to convey is that people don't help their cause when they think they'll win people over by using absolutes in their messaging. They're not helping their position when they do so (i.e. completely rejected, no consideration whatsoever). All that does is piss the other side off more. That rarely ends well, and just ends up sounding bitter.