The Crystal Garden is coming home in an innovative land swap that could be a boost for the Inner Harbour. In a three-way deal announced on Tuesday, the city of Victoria gets the Crystal and four other properties from the provincial government in exchange for lands on Harbour Road that are leased to Point Hope Maritime. The province will turn around and sell the Harbour Road properties to Point Hope.
It鈥檚 all part of the wrapup of the Provincial Capital Commission.
Although it鈥檚 complicated, the swap seems to be a 鈥渨ash鈥� in financial terms, as Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin characterized it. The city loses the lease payments from Point Hope, but no longer has to pay $385,000 a year to lease the Crystal. The city also gains the lease income from the businesses on the ground floor of the building.
The deal will allow the city to make the most of the Crystal as part of the Victoria Conference Centre, and will allow Point Hope owner Ian Maxwell to go ahead with long-planned expansion and modernization of his facilities. Meanwhile, the city gets ownership of the part of Ship Point that had belonged to the province, giving it control of a swath of waterfront.
Maxwell has been successful in turning around what had been a struggling shipyard and has wanted to buy the property for years. With the certainty of ownership, he can go ahead with $30 million worth of expansion and modernization that could double the workforce to 300 people.
He hopes to be able to snag some of the work from proposed liquefied natural gas projects. That could mean $7 million to $10 million a year.
The landmark Crystal Garden has been part of the Victoria scene since it was built in 1925. Although the tea, potted palms and saltwater pool are long gone, the building still evokes days gone by. It鈥檚 a natural fit with the Victoria Convention Centre and the Fairmont Empress hotel.
The Crystal has had a rough time over the last few decades. It was once owned by the city, but it went to seed after the heyday of the saltwater pool, and was eventually sold to the province in the 1970s for $1.
Under the capital commission, it housed a tropical garden with exotic animals, but that was shuttered, to much public outrage. The commission replaced the animals with an ill-conceived, privately run attraction that was supposed to showcase sa国际传媒, but soon died.
The city, with help from a $2-million federal-provincial grant, put $9.6 million into renovations of the Crystal in 2008. It costs $500,000 a year to run and brings in $250,000 a year in revenues. The city hopes the Crystal will allow it to bring in larger conferences, but the question is how best to use it.
In 2013 and 2014, only about 15 per cent of delegate-days were connected to the Crystal Garden, so clearly it is not being used to capacity. It will take some creative thinking to change that.
Three of the other properties in the swap are small parks, two of them in James Bay. The city doesn鈥檛 gain much there, because the province would never have dared to blacktop a park in James Bay.
From the viewpoint of the thousands of people who enjoy the Inner Harbour, the Ship Point consolidation could be the most important part of the package. The city could create a coherent vision for the Inner Harbour and turn those parking lots into something Victorians can be proud of.
The capital commission is gone, but jobs, an economic boost and a more beautiful harbour could rise from the ashes.
