With Glanmore House bursting at the seams and the city having no place to properly store or display its artifacts, a study is recommending a new museum for the City of Belleville.
At Monday’s meeting, council will be asked to approve the Museum Needs Feasibility Study and direct staff to begin planning to implement its recommendations.
Those suggestions include finding a solution for museum storage needs, a new fire suppression system at Glanmore National Historic Site and the potential expansion of the Belleville Library to accommodate a future Belleville Museum.
Museum Services has three collections, consisting of approximately 30,000 artifacts.
The study, completed this summer by Lord Cultural Resources consulting firm, says adding a second heritage museum in a high-profile location like the library to showcase the city’s various collections would create a downtown tourism and cultural hub that would attract more people to the city’s core and businesses.
It also recommends that the Glanmore National Historic Site should no longer attempt to function as both a historic house and a community museum, noting that Glanmore is unable to properly ensure the collection and preservation of heritage and historical materials.
The study recommends construction of a new storage building at Glanmore to house and protect the existing valuable artifact collections and works of art and to allow the continued collection of artifacts.
It also calls for the completion of restoration work at Glanmore, improvements to staff work areas and public spaces and the addition of a fire suppression system for the preservation and safety of the building and artifact collection.
The total cost of these recommendations would be about $21.3 million with the new museum accounting for approximately $17.6 million of that estimate.
A new museum would be a long-term project involving several years of planning and a fundraising campaign with the possibility of completion somewhere around 2033.
You can read the Belleville Museum Needs Feasibility Study report here.
