Capital Daily for Friday, July 3

The yellowish art-deco building at Blanshard and Burdett has been Victoria's largest visual arts hub for four and a half years. Now Reliance Properties wants to convert the old BC Power Commission building into a 126-room hotel, and the roughly 200 artists working behind its doors would have to leave.

Logan Ford runs the Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society, which took over the vacant building in 2022 for its tall ceilings and windows that actually open. Four galleries and five arts non-profits set up inside. He's now hunting for a space big enough to hold them all, and finding little.

Ford is careful not to blame the developer, which rented the building below market rate and is seeking a heritage alteration permit to do the conversion. But the math of Victoria real estate is doing the damage on its own. The affordable spaces he's toured lately are stuffy office floors with drop ceilings and sealed windows, useless for painting or ventilation.

If the city grants the permit, the artists could be out as early as next spring. Ford's pitch is a long shot: a philanthropist with a fixer-upper, or someone who knows of one going cheap.

The patios that spill onto downtown sidewalks were living on borrowed time under the old math: fees frozen since 2023, then a full doubling scheduled for 2027. On Thursday, council walked that back.

At a committee of the whole meeting, councillors voted to hold fees at current levels and tie future increases to the Consumer Price Index instead. Staff pitched it as a way to cover the cost of running the program without hitting restaurants with a single steep hike, and to buy time to study curbside and on-street parking needs downtown.

Coun. Jeremy Caradonna framed the trade plainly. Businesses are using public space, he said, so charging for it is fair, but that space also fills the streets with people. "Moderating the increases really makes a lot of sense," he said.

The change comes in as an amendment to the city's existing patio regulation bylaw.