It’s been over a year since city workers started tearing up the first floor space at the Khyber, but the renovations remain indefinitely stalled. The city was supposed to be helping the 125-year-old building get up to code when construction crews started tearing holes in the walls back in October, 2011. Shortly thereafter, the work stopped.
“It’s really frustrating because I’d be more than happy to go patch the holes myself and start using it again,” says Khyber Arts Society artistic director Dan Joyce. “But since the room isn’t being leased to anyone, no one can go in.”
Joyce suspects the depth of the work needed, including cleaning out asbestos, surpassed the project’s initial cost and caused the delay.
“They’re still planning on (finishing the renovations),” he says. “I just don’t know when.”
The well-known arts centre on Barrington Street has had a complicated history with the city. The KAS is still waiting on a three year lease initially promised in 2009, and struggles to meet safety codes and acquire funding have been common in their “roller coaster” relationship with HRM.
“Sometimes it’s really good and the city’s getting involved,” says Joyce. “Then they fire, or remove or shuffle their staff around and you’re working with someone new.”
“Over the last couple of years they’ve been more proactive, but at times it still really feels like we’re kind of this pothole they don’t want to fix.”
Some help might arrive from the HRM’s just announced arts advisory committee, which is hoping to develop a multi-year plan for increased arts funding once set up later this spring. Until then, visitors will have to put up with the mess.
“It’s hard to operate an arts centre when people first walk in they see just an abandoned, vacant looking space,” says Joyce.
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This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2013.
Geez, I wish this place would get torn down/burn down/fall down and we could get something good on that block.
That building is a treasure, and if it weren’t for KAS, it never would have survived the 90’s, like so many other heritage buildings. Keep up the good fight, Khyber folks!
Hey Bo Gus,
The building the Khyber occupies has held very different but incredibly important roles in the city, from the day it was built right up to the present. It’s one of the best example of Victorian Gothic architecture in the country, and a treasure to the street. It’s more than worth a bit of fix-up cash, and I hope it gets every penny it needs to get up snuff.