By NICK STEWART
Despite missing the initial construction start date by nearly two years, officials for the long-discussed Science Village hold firm that the Timmins facility will be ready by as early as March.
Having recently acquired a site on the corner of Balsam Street South and Third Avenue in downtown Timmins, the non-profit Science Timmins is currently remodeling to convert the location into a kid-friendly regional science centre.
“We’re out of the shell now,” Antoine Garwah, the project’s lead, says.
“We’ve been talking about it for the last two or three years and we’re finally biting the bullet and jumping in head first. It was either we do something about it or drop it, and we’re not dropping it.”
Little progress has been seen since serious talks were held about the project in early 2005, when plans were in place to seek funding for the site in anticipation of work beginning in 2006 for a 2008 completion date.
However, Garwah says some scaling back of the project’s original ambitions was necessary in light of its prohibitively high price tag, which was identified by consultants as reaching as much as $20 million.
Rather than continuing to wait for more funding, Science Timmins is leveraging $150,000 in seed money to kick off an initial stage of development for its vision. Additional phases of growth will be developed as more funding rolls in, with an eye on eventually achieving the $20 million target.
“We have to open it sometime, as people have been asking what’s happening, so we figured we’d bite the bullet and open something small,” Garwah says. “We’ll grow with it, as it’s just funding that’s put us behind, and $20 million is not easy to raise in the North.”
The current 10,000-square-foot site will employ up to eight people when it opens and feature various interactive exhibits with the newest videoconferencing technologies. Given the lack of particularly deep pockets, the Science Village will initially feature simple equipment obtained from hardware stores or other local outlets.
A traveling exhibit is also in the works, with a large vehicle or bus transporting mobile exhibits on the environment, mining, the diamond industry, and so on. It’s anticipated that this will also be ready in time for the building’s official opening in September.
The new building is being viewed as a temporary solution to the issue of the project’s growth, as Garwah says he expects financial and community support for the “real building” to ready in three years.
