(01-19-2021, 06:21 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Was anyone else unaware that the city has purchased the BMO building and is committed to holding it for up to 10 years to enable THEMUSEUM to raise the funds needed for construction?
Ya, City purchased the space in early 2020, (which might feel like an eternity ago). Interestingly a few months after the City purchased the property they released a report (Page 13), that calls the long term sustainability of TheMusuem into question. The Record had a good summary of the report.
TheMusuem is already getting a lot of support from all levels of government. In 2020 before the Pandemic, they received $705,000 in operating funding, $125,000 of in-kind rent for the building from the city of Kitchener, $150,000 from City of Kitchener, $45,000 from City of Waterloo and $385,000 from the Region of Waterloo. They had a funding shortfall of around $400,000, and a reserve of $2m with $1m restricted by the donor of how it can be used.
In 2018 TheMusuem brought in $2.5m in revenue, with nearly $900k (35%) of that coming from ticket sales and rentals, but the rest coming from different levels of government. TheMusuem has requested at 58% increases to their operating grant in order to continue operating as they are. In the report, TheMuseum says that the only way they can survive is to expand the size of their facility in order to increase revenues. However the findings of the report state that TheMusuem has had ongoing deficits since 2009, they have close double the staff of most comparative organizations and should be able to operate within their existing budget.
The options that are presented in the report for the TheMusuem are:
- Continue as is, and begin incurring liability starting in Jan 2020
- Wind down operations, and maybe re-start and reorganize as something else
- Transition to a balanced and sustainable operating model