By Chad Klassen

Negotiations, civic duties causing delays in cultural centre at Stuart Wood

Mar 11, 2019 | 3:59 PM

KAMLOOPS — The former Stuart Wood Elementary School has sat empty for nearly two years now, and while there are plans in place to transform it into a cultural centre, the building will remain vacant for at least the next year.

Delays in negotiations between the City of Kamloops and the Tk’emlups Indian Band, along with other civic responsibilities, have pushed the project back.

“We just had an election in November, so of course we have new turnaround at our leadership table from both aspects,” noted Tk’emlups Chief Rosanne Casimir. “I know it was about getting our table up to date as to some of the different things that are happening. Stuart Wood was a little bit [further] down the list of items to get updated.”

The Stuart Wood building has been unused since students vacated in June 2016. Over time, there have been conversations to determine the future use of the building, which must be educational in nature. The City of Kamloops and Tk’emlups Indian Band settled on the idea of a cultural centre.

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That was a year and half ago, and a formal agreement has yet to be signed.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was expected to be signed at Monday’s bi-annual community-to-community forum. But Chief Casimir now hopes to sign off on the cultural centre by the end of this year with a potential opening date in 2020.

“That would be very nice. It’s been vacant for some time now, so that’s why it’s so important,” noted Casimir. “We just went through our election processes and getting updated, and making sure we set that time aside internally on our side to go through that. They approved it at their table, so we have still yet to approve it at ours. But it’s also to add our flavour to it.”

The MOU would help to determine the educational elements to which the cultural centre would be home. Mayor Ken Christian hopes the agreement can be signed this summer, but he understands why a project like this has been slow to move.

“You don’t realize it until you sit down and you start to look at everything from the Xget’tem Trail (Peterson Creek pathway) to the issues related to emergency preparedness, our fire agreement, our sanitary-sewer agreement. There are a lot of areas where we are collaborating with Tk’emlups te Secwepemc,” said Christian.

Christian has a vision for the centre and says once it is eventually complete, it will be a great attraction for Kamloops residents and tourists alike.

“The history of the railroads in this community, the influence of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the arrival of the Northwest Mounted Police into Kamloops,” he noted. “Those kinds of things are rich stories that both the citizens of Kamloops and the residents of Tk’emlups te Secwepemc — as well as visitors to this community — really want to hear.”

Christian envisions artisans at the cultural centre as well as gift shop, bringing a farmers’ market feel to the centre. But that may not become a reality for another year or more.