It should be noted that the Theatre is designated as a Heritage Site. All guidelines associated with maintaining this status will be adhered to and respected as part of these renovations.

Independent of the City’s Legacy Fund application, the WSO is considering the submittal of an application for the Community Anniversaries Fund, also administered by the Ministry of Canadian Heritage. The Community Anniversaries Fund provides up to $25,000 for small capital projects, or $200,000 for large events tied to the centennial anniversary. If the WSO is successful, the funds received would be used for community events and would not replace or duplicate the projects identified in the City’s application.

Risk Analysis:

There is the potential risk that the application is not selected for funding or receives an amount less than the requested $500,000. If so, this would reduce the amount of City funding that could be reallocated for the additional capital items identified by WSO and list above. This is considered possible to occur and would impact the efficiencies which could be gained by such investments. This risk can be mitigated by future capital budget requests to address these projects.

Should the City be successful in its’ grant application and receive funding in part or in full, Administration is recommending that the surplus City funding, up to a maximum of $500,000, be used to fund the additional capital items as requested by the WSO. Some of these capital items are physically movable and, although improbable, could be removed from the site while the Theatre is being leased or upon lease termination. Administration is working with the City’s Legal department to ensure that the lease agreement between the City and the WSO is amended to reflect that all capital items funded by the Grant shall remain the sole property of the City, and may not be removed from the Theatre by WSO. This risk is considered unlikely to occur and is of medium impact.

Council should also be aware that all City funding for this project is derived from the Service Sustainability Reserve, which is partially funded by the incremental 1.16% annual Asset Management tax levy recently approved by City Council for six years to address the City’s infrastructure deficit and which was approved as part of the 2020 budget deliberations. A reduction or elimination of this annual increase in subsequent years will require other projects to be pushed out or cancelled to accommodate the pre-commitment of these funds.

Climate Change Risks

Climate Change Mitigation:

A new HVAC system will be more efficient than the current system reducing energy consumption and green house gas emissions.