An architectural vision for Kelowna’s proposed multi-million dollar performing arts centre

As the conversation gets more serious around a new multi-million dollar performing arts centre in Kelowna, architects have presented a vision for what the building could look like to get the public thinking about it.

Citizens for a New Performing Arts Centre Society is an organization gathering support for the idea, and it held an event this week to get people talking about what they want to see in a new performing arts centre.

“When we started five years ago, it was if. Today it’s when,” Ballet Kelowna founder and president of Citizens for a New Performing Arts Centre Myles Bruckal told iNFOnews.ca.

The City of Kelowna has a task force dedicated to arts and culture and a big part of its purpose is to work on the plan for a new performing arts centre. The task force came up with its initial recommendations last year, and is set to put forward some next steps on Dec. 1.

The city still needs to go through the administrative processes, which include finding the land, going through the design, the planning and approval process and so on.

The performing arts centre is still just an idea, but Robert Claiborne and Jodi James are architects well-versed in theatre architecture and they presented ideas for what the new performing arts centre could look like to a crowd of roughly 300 people at the event, Thursday, Nov. 13.

“This was a visioning exercise that he took our society through, that taught us a lot about what it takes to get a theatre, and then we were presenting that visioning information to the public. So that’s one of the early steps in getting a theatre built,” Bruckal said.

The idea is to have a 1,600-seat facility to fill the gap between the existing 800-seat Kelowna Community Theatre and the Prospera Place arena, which has a general capacity of roughly 6,800.

“As part of the cultural plan for the city, there are a range of facilities and outlets that they have to address and develop. This is just one piece of that puzzle. This piece of the void that we have for a larger performing arts centre,” Bruckal said. “The Kelowna Choir have moved on because the (Kelowna Community Theatre) is too small. And you think about the graduating classes that we have in Kelowna now. They’ve moved on from using that facility because it’s too small.”

Claiborne said the new performing arts centre ought to be multi-purpose so it can host everything from small dance recitals to dentist convention talks.

“Flexibility is key, and that is one thing that we don’t currently have here,” he said.

Ahead of this week’s event, mayor Tom Dyas released a statement to try to avoid any misunderstandings about who makes decisions about the new performing arts centre.

“These groups are not affiliated with the city’s Centre for the Performing Arts process,” Dyas said in the statement. “For a new Okanagan Centre for the Performing Arts to move forward, it will ultimately require city direction and partnership to turn the community’s vision into an achievable project.”

Bruckal said the city has been speaking with the society to discuss the project.

“We are pretty close with the city and the mayor, and we had met that morning to kind of talk about it. Anything that we do, we let the city know. And we wanted to make sure that there wasn’t the wrong impression given to the public, because this work and these drawings and presentations were our society. The city itself has its own processes, the staff’s working on it, the task force that the mayor leads is working through the steps,” Bruckal said.