If all goes well two museum’s will be open in Keremeos this summer.
The South Similkameen Museum Society is gearing up to open its new museum, at the former Masonic Lodge, on 9th Avenue and is hoping to also operate the previous B.C. police station on 6th Avenue.
“We’re kind of working with the working title, ‘we’ve got so much history, we need two museums,’” Rob Showell, the museum’s president said during a recent council meeting.
“We are looking at this as it’s known locally as the Keremeos Museum and then we have the Keremeos Museum 2.0. We’re hoping to garner support and artifacts from the local community.”
The society purchased the former Masonic Lodge in 2016 with hopes of moving the former B.C police station, which was moved from Upper Keremeos to its current location 101 years ago .
Since then, they’ve run into several obstacles, Showell said, including finding out the building couldn’t be moved safely, a flood and lack of contractors to do work at the new building.
“The building was built in the early 60s before there was an accessibility regulations, so we had to do a lot of upgrades,” he said. “(Our) first challenge was to get access to the building. There was no way for a wheelchair person to access the building.”
The museum society had received $50,000 in funding through a Canada 150 grant that was earmarked to move the smaller building on 6th Avenue to a concrete pad in front of the new museum. But when that wasn’t possible, the grant was changed so it could go towards accessibility projects.
The museum society has built a large ramp that goes out the front of the museum and put in several wheelchair accessible bathrooms. A back ramp into the basement was not possible before the grant was expired, as contractors could not be found.
Unfortunately in late fall, the pipes in the museum froze flooding the basement with four inches of water.
Showell said repairs were completed after an insurance claim was done. Upgrades to the insulation were also done, as museum members found there was no insulation in the basement walls.
“A whole bunch of people got together and did this. It was no small effort,” he said.
The museum society has applied for funding for three summer students.
“It remains to be seen how much funding we get for that and we can poll our membership to get some hours in there. One idea that we were throwing around is drawing back to five days, Wednesday to Sunday,” he said.
The museum has a request in to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure for new signage but the ministry’s requires the museum be open before the signage is put up.
Mayor Manfred Bauer said discussions are underway to get signage or directions up as part of the downtown revitalization project and the group can use the community reader board.
“This has been a huge effort with a lot of unknowns. I understand the disappointment with regards to not being able to move the old location to the new location as was originally planned. I’m glad you were able to switch that grant over to the accessibility issues,” he said.