The Canadian Museum of Flight (CMF) has found a new home at Pitt Meadows Regional Airport, after close to 30 years at Langley Airport.
An agreement between the museum and Pitt Meadows Airport Society will see a site made available at the Pitt Meadows Regional Airport for a new, bigger museum of more than10,000 sq. metres, more than four times the size of the just over 2,100 sq. metre hangar space the museum operates in at the Langley airport.
Mike Sattler, a Canadian Museum of Flight Association director, told the Langley Advance Times that the extra space is needed to accommodate a growing collection of aircraft and aviation-related exhibits at the non-profit, volunteer-driven institution.
"We realized that we had kind of reached a critical mass," Sattler explained, with a choice between becoming a "static" museum, or finding needed room for its growing collection of flyable aircraft, which includes replicas of First World War Sopwith Pup fighters.
Among other things, the newer, bigger facility will allow the museum to move some of the aircraft currently displayed outdoors either indoors or under cover of an outdoor shelter, and to display some that are currently in storage.
"We've got a library with nearly 10,000 publications which we're trying to find space for, we've got the historical aircraft that we have," Sattler commented. "We needed to really increase the size of the museum."
Announcement of the move comes after a previous attempt, a few years ago, at relocating to the west of the north-south runway adjacent to Fraser Highway and the Derek Doubleday Arboretum, fell though because it was near a stream, and environmental restrictions would have limited the size of a new museum building.
There were also geological issues that would have required preloading, or packing the ground to settle and strengthen the site, that would have increased the construction costs.
That was when the board started looking at other options, Sattler said.
"Staying at Langley was our first choice," Sattler said. "We really wanted to stay there. It's been our home for the last 20-something years. But then we realized that the museum was changing [becoming] something that was a little bit bigger than we had imagined."
They approached the Langley, Boundary Bay, Pitt Meadows, and Abbotsford airports, looking for bigger sites that would "still allow us to be in the Lower Mainland, still be available to schools in the area, still available to general study and having access to tourism."
On Wednesday, Nov. 27, Pitt Meadows Mayor Nicole MacDonald announced the partnership between the Pitt Meadows Airport Society and museum, calling it "a remarkable opportunity for our community."
"This project aligns perfectly with our vision for a vibrant and engaged community, and we look forward to the seeing the positive impact it will have for residents and visitors alike." MacDonald said.
Sattler said it will probably take about five years to complete the relocation, and it won't be cheap.
"Just to move the aircraft [alone] to Pitt Meadows is going to be just under $1.5 million," Sattler estimated.
"This is one huge undertaking, and it's taken us a number of years to get to this point."
Initial response to the announcement has been positive.
"We've already had approaches for funding." Sattler reported. "This is fantastic. This means that there is a passion and then a desire out there from the general public for what we are trying to achieve as a society, as an organization."
While money was raised for the Langley site and has been put aside, it is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions, Sattler noted.
The museum was founded in 1977 and originally operated in Surrey before moving to Langley in 1996.
