The denouement of "l'affaire Dionne" is underway and, as expected, dollar signs were the major topic of discussion at the meeting that saw the Community Services committee recommend a move to Strong Township for the original Dionne Home.
Monday, staff presented a report to City Council members detailing the costs associated with moving the home that the Dionne Quintuplets were born in. The report also shed light on the initial efforts made by the City to find an "entity," that desired to assume responsibility for the home/museum and was willing to defray the costs associated with such a move.
The home currently sits in a state of disrepair at Seymour Street and the Highway 11/17 bypass, where it has been located since 1985. In 2015, the North Bay Chamber of Commerce, which had operated the museum in conjunction with a tourist information centre on the City-owned property, ceased operations when the Chamber moved its headquarters.
The City has expressed its wishes to, "in a manner respectful to the Dionne legacy," divest itself of the museum and sell the designated surplus land on which the home currently sits. Efforts to find a suitable group to take ownership of the Dionne holdings in their entirety were unsuccessful, so a plan to split the home, furniture and artifacts among different interested parties was formed.
Paper artifacts would go to the Harris Learning Library, where a curator on staff would care for the paper documents. Some artifacts would be transferred to the Callander Bay Museum.
The home itself and its furnishings would be transferred to the Strong Agricultural Society, with the City of North Bay contributing as much as half of the estimated $75,000 moving cost. The report claims that much of those costs could be offset by in-kind contributions once fundraising and grants in Strong are realized.
There was some concern from staff that any further delay could lead to the partners in place to grow impatient with the process. Indications were that the Strong Agricultural Society had suspended fundraising efforts until a decision was reached at city council.
The Friends of the Dionne Home, a group that has in excess of 2,500 signatures on a petition to keep the home in North Bay was not permitted to make a public presentation at Monday's committee-level meeting, but leaders Jeff Fournier and Joshua Pride indicated that they would come up with a rebuttal to the report at next Monday's regular council meeting, when it is expected a vote will take place to determine the home's destination.
Director of Community Services John Severino, citing a 2004 joint City-Chamber of Commerce relocation study, estimated the inflation-adjusted costs associated with moving the home as $135,000-$145,000, which includes only the lifting and movement of the home to a location within the region.
Attendance dropped from just over 15,000 visitors in 1987 to a touch over 3,000 in 2015 at the museum, according to Severino. This is "not an uncommon trend at single-topic museums we have learned," added Severino.
"Over the last 10 years, it is estimated that the Chamber has been subsidizing the museum at an annual cost of between $40,000-$80,000 to operate. In 2014, the last full year of operation, the Chamber lost $75,400 (after operating grants) and not including general maintenance, full-time staff, heat and hydro, insurance, administrative support, all absorbed by the Chamber," Severino read from the report. The 2004 study projected a 5-year, annual loss of in excess of $82,000.
A yearly budget line of $125,00-$175,000 would be required for the City to operate the museum as it had been for the last few decades.
"Capital would also be required for the initial move and ongoing maintenance," said Severino, adding "some feel that the building should be designated a Heritage building in order to access grants, this is not the case," as the available grants would come from the municipal level, making the City both the grantor and grantee.
"It would be near-impossible for the museum to reach financial viability," added Senior Planner Peter Carello, "In the last 10 years of operation from the Chamber, their revenues from the museum ranged from $50,620 up to $82,427. The cost of a curator alone, based on data gleaned from the Government of Canada, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $60,000 plus benefits."
According to an expert from a national museum, Carello relayed that, "This is common for single-subject museums. As time goes on, and there's more time from the event that led to the museum's creation, and as demographics change, attendance gradually drops and drops and drops. That's not a short-term trend, that's just the way it will go, and that's what we've seen with the Dionne Quints museum."
