NDAC proposes floating stage project for Lakeside Park
By Colin Payne
In a city like Nelson, where more land is vertical than not, you have to get creative when looking for new spaces for just about anything. The Nelson and District Arts Council (NDAC) wants to do just that, by building a floating stage at Lakeside Park that would serve as a much-needed summer performance and concert venue for both local and traveling artists.
According to Neil Harrower of the NDAC, who helped conceive the project, the idea of putting a covered floating stage at Lakeside Park isn’t exactly a new one.
“Back in the 1950s when they landscaped the whole area down at Lakeside . . . they had the foresight to carve into the landscape an ampitheatre.” Harrower said. “The benefits are unbelievable because it did exist and there are certain elements that perhaps could be grandfathered in. The pilings are still there, where they connected the stage to the floor of the lake.”
One of the main goals of recreating the floating stage at Lakeside for the NDAC would be to help make itself more financially self-sustaining.
Harrower notes that currently the NDAC relies entirely on grants and revenue from Nelson Artwalk (or Nelson Artwalk and Culture Festival, as it’s being rechristened this year).
“NDAC is currently 87 percent reliant on funding from governments,” the NDAC said in a recent budget submission to Nelson city council. “We are looking at increasing our earned revenue, ultimately through performance ticket sales and stewardship of this proposed resurrected venue.”
“What the NDAC doesn’t want is to be a one trick pony with Art Walk,” Harrower added. “We’re in a position to take some initiative to solve a problem of no stage in the summer by seriously looking at this. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
Harrower explained that Nelson has little in the way of summer performance venues, as the Capitol Theatre hosts the Summer Youth Program in July and then closes for much of August.
“We’ve got a town full of actors and musicians and one stage,” he said. “There is this sort of desperation in the arts community for a performance venue.”
Harrower notes that the floating performance venue would help fill this void for local performers, while also offering plenty of potential for performances from traveling musical acts during the summer months.
On top of that, he adds it would provide plenty of potential for the local tourism industry and perhaps one day even be a venue for a long-called-for local music festival.
“As much as we want to provide a service to the locals, we really want people to come to Nelson and have a theatre for them,” he says. “The local art community is served and the tourist community is served.”
A vibrant summer performance space
With a good deal of infrastructure already in place, including the ampitheatre that could seat as many as 200 people, the pilings for anchoring the stage, as well as the washrooms and concessions already at Lakeside, along with the trolley from the Prestige, Harrower and the NDAC see the revival of a Lakeside Park floating stage as the perfect opportunity to give Nelson the vibrant summer performance space it needs.
But he’s not saying it’s going to be a quick or easy feat to make it a reality.
“I don’t want to say this is happening next summer because I don’t want there to be disappointment in the local community,” Harrower said. “We’re calling it a 2020 Vision because it’s going to take about five years to pull it off properly.”
Before anything can happen the NDAC has to get funding to undertake a feasibility study for the project – along with buy-in from the City of Nelson and Nelson Daybreak Rotary.
Harrower adds that the stage would also be considered a marine entity, so they would need to go through the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) before the project could proceed.
“We’re launching a boat as much as we’re launching a stage,” Harrower noted, adding he’s hoping the project would also qualify for a grant from DFO.
Harrower added that the NDAC will be “inclusive, very respectful and approach all the proper channels.”
Nelson Mayor, Deb Kozak says she’s interested to see how the project proceeds.
“I think we would definitely like to see the plans of what might be proposed,” Kozak said. “It’s an interesting idea.
“I’m always impressed by the number of creative people in this area. They come up with really amazing ideas and then they go ahead and make them happen. And they (the NDAC) seem to have the energy to proceed and take this further.”
