City of Brantford Council voted to move ahead with plans to purchase the Brant County Museum and Archives building during its regular Council meeting on Tuesday, November 26, 2024.
During the meeting, Council voted in favour of purchasing the building for $1,600,000, plus land transfer tax costs of $28,475, for a total limit of $1,628,475 to be funded from the Capital Funding Envelope Reserve.
As part of the agreement, the Brant Historical Society (BHS) will continue to run operations out of the building for the next five years, with the option for an additional five year lease after the fact.
“This is a big day for our community because we are making a giant leap today towards the sustainability of the Brant Museum and Archives,” said Councillor Dan McCreary. “We do so in recognition of the financial challenges that these folks have faced for donkey’s years in terms of being able to provide everything to keep the lights on, to keep the HVAC system running, to keep the water running, and to still be able to employ staff and pay them a decent wage.”
McCreary added that the acquisition was a big step that will put the Brant Museum and Archives on more or less equal footing with the Canadian Military Heritage Museum, which operates out of a City-owned building at 347 Greenwich St.
“By doing this tonight, we safeguard our past and we safeguard our future because these are the folks that are responsible for our history,” said McCreary. “ It’s going to allow them to tell the Brantford story in a more secure fashion, devoting all their energies to that most important part of what they do, rather than having to worry about keeping the lights on and the grass cut. Were we not to support this tonight, it puts everything at risk.”
He continued to say that while the building is in decent shape, there is a list of improvements that need to be done over the next decade.
“We’re going to make those as we need to, and at the end of the term of lease, we’re going to have an asset that we can repurpose to perhaps provide housing or sell for another use of the downtown core. In the new year, we plan to bring a resolution which will address the long-term needs of some of the organizations in our arts, culture and museum community by looking towards the future facility that will allow us to operate a number of these things under one roof. Until we reach that point, hopefully over the next five to ten years, this museum can operate free from the financial pressures that have plagued them, and they’ll be able to continue to excel in the function of telling the Brantford story and safeguarding our history.”
The purchase comes after BHS Representatives made a request for emergency funding from the City Council during a Committee of the Whole, Planning and Administration meeting on Tuesday, August 13, 2023.
“We’re seeking your support for some emergency funding in the amount of $50,000 to help us as we implement a new three-year financial and operational plan to secure a stable financial future,” said Murray Angus, Chair of the BHS board.
Angus said that after himself and other board members were newly elected into their roles, they realized that the BHS was in a dire financial situation
“We discovered a mortgage was due on the Crystal Cottage foundation with no funds to meet that obligation,” he said.
Crystal Cottage, a one-story house with unique architectural features, was originally built around 1876, and in 1985, City Council of the day officially designated it as a heritage building, effectively solidifying the on-going care and protection of the house under the Ontario Heritage Act.
Back in 2020, a developer looking to construct an apartment building on lands bordered by Market, Chatham, Queen Street and Nelson Streets, bought several existing properties including the iconic Crystal Cottage on 35 Chatham St.
As part of the deal, the developer said it would sell the Crystal Cottage to BHS for $10.00 and would pay the estimated $300,000 fee to relocate the building to its current location on 53 Charlotte St. if the BHS agreed to pay the cost for the site grading, site works, servicing connections and any related work, to receive the Crystal Cottage.
At the time, City Council agreed to allocate $50,000 to the society from the Council Priorities Reserve to be used for eligible costs (including pouring a new foundation) related to the relocation. As well, another $50,000 from the Cultural and Built Heritage Grant Program was to be released to the society upon completion of the full project.
However, during the COVID-19 pandemic the developer abandoned their redevelopment project and left the BHS to pick up the bill for the over $300,000 move.
Because the society, which oversees around 15,000 artifacts and more than 12,000 photographs related to Brantford’s history, operates almost exclusively through an endowment fund, the society was left in an even more dire financial situation when they discovered the outstanding mortgage.
“We discovered there was no plan or direction in place to pay the mortgage that had been taken out on the building. The BHS relies almost exclusively on the endowment fund to operate the organization, and the endowment fund has virtually been depleted over the last seven years,” said Murray. “…We were dangerously close to not meeting our financial obligations on a month to month basis and to say we were on the precipice of being no longer is not an exaggeration. We were literally within a couple of months of having no money and no way of paying our obligations to our three staff members.”
To help pay off the mortgage, the BHS sold the Crystal Cottage to Dan and Carol Lyn Brown, a local couple who are known for their work in restoring heritage buildings, but even with the sale and the initial $50,000 from the City, there was still outstanding $145,873.12 worth of work costs to be paid that are not supported by outside funding.
With the endowment fund (used to operate the BHS) effectively depleted, Angus and Bill Hyde, the society’s treasurer, were asking Council for $50,000 in emergency funding in order to keep the society up and running.
“The immediate need for funding is to help us operate over the next 12 months while we work on a longer term solution,” said Angus. “We did a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis which we are using to prioritize our short, medium and long term solutions, and our request for emergency funding is critical to our ability to operate in the immediate term.”
Angus also noted that in the future, the board was hoping to pay back and increase the endowment fund in order to make themselves sufficient from the City, and that they were looking into selling their only asset which is the Brant Museum and Archives building.
Councillor Richard Carpenter thanked the board members present and said the City would do everything they could to possibly help the BHS.
“I’m fully in support of this, it’s important that we have a museum,” he said. “Keeping the museum alive and well is very important to us because if you don’t remember your history, you’re going to make mistakes going forward. …We’ll do everything we can to make sure our museum stays in the City of Brantford and funded.”
Councillors Mandy Samwell, Dan McCreary and Linda Hunt said that they would also be happy to support the BHS.
McCreary added that if the BHS were to sell their only asset, he hoped that the BHS could operate out of a City-owned building in the future.
Now, around three months later, Council has since kept its promise to help the BHS, and will move forward with the purchasing of the Brant Museum and Archives building.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
