Hornby Island prepares to build its much anticipated community arts centre — island style

Hornby Island is finally getting a long dreamed-of artists centre, with construction set to begin between mid and late January.

Rachelle Chinnery, a potter on the Gulf Island who has been involved in the campaign for the arts centre, said the project has been in the works for almost 20 years. 

"Everybody's kind of, you know, waiting by the the sidelines for this thing to happen because it's really a dream," she said.

The B.C. island is known as an arts hub, but there's never been a space like this one.

Andrew Mark, the executive director of the Hornby Island Arts Council, says the centre will serve as a multi-purpose public space and be a significant addition to the island community.

"In other places in Canada, we might take for granted something like a large, you know, public library, whereas we have a very small public library and really no open-hours kind of facility like this," Mark said. 

While the campaign has raised $1.2 million for the project, it's not quite enough funding to finish the project.

Costs have also gone up due to the pandemic. Health and safety considerations have increased labour costs and disrupted supply chains have increased costs for construction materials. 

While the group will continue to campaign for more funds and apply for grants during the construction process, Chinnery says the entire process is pretty on-brand for Hornby Island.

"We all have the experience of living in unfinished buildings on Hornby ... it's part of the tradition, actually," she said.

"So with the arts centre, what we're looking at doing is doing what we can and if we can't finish [it] the way we want it to be finished, well, we'll just finish it when we can in the future."

Construction of the centre, which Mark describes as the size of a large house around 4,500 square feet, will begin as soon as some final tree-clearing permits are approved. The designs were created by D'Arcy Jones Architects.

The project is expected to wrap up construction in fall or early winter. 

And while the breaking of ground on this much anticipated facility will be more muted due to the pandemic, Chinnery says the project is a blessing.

"Doing this kind of a construction project in a pandemic is really giving all of us something to focus on," she said.