The NPA says they'll give the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Art Gallery the rights to the full property between Cambie, Beatty, Georgia and Dunsmuir to develop a world-class institution if elected Nov. 19.
"We've wasted a lot of the art gallery's time," said NPA council hopeful Elizabeth Ball.
The NPA also said it would support the Museum of Vancouver, the Maritime Museum and a proposed concert hall with infrastructure money in its arts and culture policy, released Oct. 31.
Vision and COPE vowed in their arts and culture platform to expedite public consultation on on-site expansion, a move to the West Georgia Street Canada Post building or to the Cambie Street grounds.
Ball insists the gallery needs to move so it can, at the very least, display the majority of its artwork that's held in storage.
"The Canada Post site is absolutely wrong for the art gallery," she added. "It's not going to bring people from all over the world to see this building _The arts deserve [a purpose-built home] as opposed to always being shoe-horned into something that belonged to somebody else."
Giving the gallery the opportunity to develop the entire Cambie site would allow the institution to benefit from building office space so it could pay the city the $40 million encumbrance on the land and create its own revenue-generating operating endowment, according to Ball.
Vision Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»council candidate and incumbent councillor Heather Deal doesn't understand how the NPA can promise to hand over the land.
"[The art gallery has] run into some recent challenges and they're going to have to show us that they have a good business plan for an expanded gallery," she said.
The NPA promises to create infrastructure financing and operating endowment funds that would increase in perpetuity and provide larger capital contributions to arts organizations from the city using community amenity contributions from developers.
Ball said amenity contributions are negotiated only for large-scale developments. The NPA would work with developers to set a firm percentage for amenity contributions on all developments, big and small, and direct a portion of the contributions to the infrastructure funds.
Deal wondered how this would affect amenity contributions for social housing, daycares, parks and recreation.
"It's worth looking at, I guess, but I don't see the full policy, which is how you balance out the needs of every neighbourhood that way," she said.
Vision and COPE said they would maintain arts and culture funding.
The NPA said it would create more arts and culture programming at community centres.
The NPA also intends to create an expanded cultural tourism plan.
"We look at the city as a very big city with huge possibilities and that every organization can benefit from a master tourism plan that affects everyone and connects everyone," Ball said.
Vision and COPE want to experiment with 50 free passes available at libraries that borrowers can use for a limited amount of time at museums and art galleries.
"What I really don't see in their platform on the arts is anything that addresses the challenge of affordability for artists in the city," Deal said. "I don't see anything that helps them get studio space through the tools that we have, which is zoning and bylaws."
Vision and COPE have committed to creating 10,000 square feet of new studio space for the arts over the next three years if they're re-elected.
Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi
