Hmm, make of this article what you will. Have we heard any updated funding numbers from Cantos?
Feds contributed $25 M for Calgary music centre despite financing concerns
By Peter O'Neil, Calgary Herald March 5, 2012
OTTAWA — The Harper government agreed to conditionally contribute $25 million in late 2010 to construct a national music centre in Calgary, despite concerns expressed by bureaucrats about the proponent’s ability to secure sufficient private financing, according to newly released documents.
The $132.5-million project is also behind the construction schedule the proponent committed to at the time of the announcement, the more than 1,000 pages of records obtained through the Access to Information Act show.
Cantos Music Foundation president Andrew Mosker, who is spearheading the music centre, says fundraising timing has had to change, but is doing well after a renewed commitment from the provincial government.
The foundation, which operates a Calgary museum featuring one of the largest keyboard collections in the world, received commitments of $25 million apiece that year from Calgary and the federal and Alberta governments to construct the 135,000-square-foot centre.
Cantos was left responsible for raising the remaining $57.5 million for the ambitious project, which will include music memorabilia from the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, a recording studio, a musical venue and restaurant in the location of the old King Eddy blues bar, and artist-in-residence studios to lure prominent musicians.
“It is clear that as a not-for-profit organization with few significant assets of its own, the success of the foundation’s significant fundraising campaign will be critical for both the construction and operational phases,” according to a “project review” of the proposed centre.
“The possibility that the foundation may not be able to reach its overall fundraising target remains a key risk for the proposed project,” said the analysis dated October 2010, the same month Ottawa announced it would match the $25-million apiece pledged by Calgary and the Alberta government.
Other documents also mentioned the risk factor, including one email issued five days before the announcement from one Infrastructure Canada official to another, asking: “Are there any thoughts on what conditions we should be proposing to mitigate the risks we discussed?”
Read more:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...#ixzz1oFsWMetX
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What is required and has that amount changed (as often does between project inception and shovel in the ground)?
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