Please note, a few words/lines of this letter have been edited or redacted to protect personal identities:

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When we rented the building we specifically asked the previous inspector, among other things, if using the building as a Community Hall & Church would be a change of use. He asked what our intention was and we informed him that we would be holding concerts in the hall as part of our worship service and to raise money to support the hall. He indicated that the use of the property would fall under the usages that he highlighted on the page that I have attached. He didn't see that our usage would constitute a change considering we were applying for a registered non-profit society status. Since then the Creston Valley community has embraced the idea of having a hall available for their use in their midst and several organizations are now proud to call it their "home" and use it on a regular basis. We would point out that community usage of the hall is still at a smaller rate of attendance than when the building was used by the Creston Faith Center, We have gleaned that information from former church congregation members.

 

The hall is presently used as:

 

•   A church by two different community worship groups:

1. The Livingroom Worship Group

2. The Church of The Latter-Day Dude

• A community center/hall by the following:

1. Erickson Community Association

2. The Venue - Performance and Visual Arts Society

3. Kootenay Film Society

4. 7th Siding Festival of Film

5. Creston Climate Action Group

• A meeting room by the following groups:

1. Battle of The Bands

2. Mindset Habits

3. A Dab of Art

4. Creston's Writers Group

5. Creston's Memoir Group

6. Stream 2 K.E.S. Mastermind group

 

Our society, The Venue - Performance and Visual Arts Society manages the building and events for the other societies and groups.

 

Our agreement with our landlord was that we would finish replacing the siding on the building that her recently deceased husband had begun replacing. To date we have completed the removal and disposal of the old siding on the West side of the building and installed insulation on the wall in preparation for the siding. Other than painting the inside of the hall and replacing a broken sink in the bathroom we have not done any renovations.

 

In regards to the email you sent our landlord and the building code requirements for the building located at 3622 Erickson (Church) Road, it is giving us less than two weeks to comply. While meeting these requirements is the landlords responsibility they have made it clear they have no interest in our community project. The responsibility is ours. We are a registered non-profit society that is supported by the community at large through events, donations and tithes. At this time, without an outside funding source (which we're searching for), we are unable to meet the code requirements. It has been suggested that we get Columbia Basin Trust funding for the project. CBT will not fund capital projects on rental property.

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As you can see by checking our website at https://www.thevenuecreston.com/, we have shut down ALL meetings, events etc at the hall as per your request and in accordance with best practices concerning COVID-19. We have listed all events as "Cancelled or Postponed, date TBA" where we have been able to contact the artist. For event's beginning in May we have not yet been able to contacted the artists involved to let them know their shows have been cancelled so we have not listed them as cancelled but we have put a stop to ticket sales as you can see if you click on any of the events. The ticket button shows "Ticket Sales Have Ended". Once we have contacted the artists and let them know their show has been cancelled we will list it on the event page in red as we have done so with the events for the month of March and April. This is an industry courtesy.

 

Because of the COVID-19 threat, it is extremely difficult to get trades people to do estimates, work, etc. As you can see from our website at www.thevenuecreston.com, the building is no longer in use, we have shut everything down, so in light of our cooperation we are respectfully asking for a 6 month extension to these requirement while we wait for the virus to hopefully burn itself out and for people to start working again. We have rented a storage bin and are beginning to move equipment, furniture etc into storage in anticipation of having to close permanently. We cannot survive financially with a lengthy shut down. Right now the trades people that are still working are overworked and unable to handle our requests for estimates etc until things slow down.

 

We are hoping we can work together with RDCK so that this important community resource will continue to exist.