Laurentian University says it needs another month to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request made by Sudbury.com in April for an engineering report on the repair status of the Bell Mansion.
The 100-year-old university-owned building, which has for many years housed the Art Gallery of Sudbury, was closed in October 2023 because it was no longer safe in its current state of repair.
The issue with the Bell Mansion is with the south-facing wall and chimney, and doesn’t impact the gallery’s collection. The gallery’s art collection is safe, split between storage spaces in the Bell Mansion and at Laurentian University.
Following the Bell Mansion’s closure last fall, the gallery has since rented space at 172 and 174 Elgin St., on the same strip as Sudbury Custom Paint and Framing, to house its gallery shop and some exhibitions.
The document we requested was produced by the firm JL Richards in December 2023. Sudbury.com requested a copy of the document from Laurentian in March 2024, but university communications staff said the engineering report is “not publicly available.”
We then formally submitted a freedom of information request for the document under the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
In general, under provincial legislation, information access requests must be completed within 30 days.
But in a May 13 letter, Laurentian said the time limit for making a decision on our request has been extended until June due to the necessity for third-party consultations.
“Please accept this correspondence as your written Notice of Delay as the records for which you have requested access to contain information that may affect the interests of third parties,” said the letter from Laurentian senior legal counsel Renée Fuchs.
“To that end, and in accordance with section 28 of FIPPA, we are required to notify the affected third parties and provide them with the opportunity to make representations with respect to the disclosure of the records, or parts thereof.
“This process requires the timelines for the decision to be adjusted. The timeline to process your request has been extended for an additional 30 days. A decision on whether the records will be disclosed will be made by June 24th 2024.”
Eight months after the building’s closure, Art Gallery of Sudbury director and curator Demetra Christakos said she still has not seen a copy of the JL Richards report on the repair status of the Bell Mansion.
However, she said Laurentian staff did give her some ideas on timelines late last year. Once a decision is made to proceed with the repair work, it would need to go to tender, which would take two months.
Laurentian told Christakos last year the repair work would take five weeks. All told, these processes add up to about three-and-a-half months.
Christakos will meet May 28 with Laurentian’s new president, Lynn Wells, as well as the university’s vice-president, finance and administration Sylvie Lafontaine, to discuss the situation.
“There's no new information on our end as of today,” Christakos told Sudbury.com this week. “I don’t know what will come out of the conversation next week.”
Sudbury.com also reached out to Laurentian University earlier this month for an interview with an administrator on the Bell Mansion file. We instead received a written statement from vice-president Sylvie Lafontaine.
"We continue collaborative conversations with the Art Gallery of Sudbury with respect to the Bell Mansion,” said Lafontaine, in the statement.
“We have a meeting scheduled for later this month with the leadership of the Art Gallery where we will discuss how to best support them. We value the Art Gallery as a partner, as well as their important contributions to the Greater Sudbury community."
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.
