Presentation House given $4M donation for new gallery

A new art gallery on the North Vancouver waterfront is one big step closer to reality, after Polygon Homes and the Audain Foundation announced a donation of $4 million to the Presentation House Gallery.

It will help the gallery build a new facility near Lonsdale Quay, which will be named Polygon Gallery. The total cost of the project is $15 million, and its expected to open in 2017.

The gallery had previously received $2.5 million in funding from the City of North Vancouver and about $1 million in private donations.

Reid Shier, the executive director and curator of the gallery, said being on the waterfront is a much better location than the gallery's current site in an old school house on Chesterfield Avenue.

"It's off the beaten track, up three flights of stairs at the top of an old building that even in 1930 was being condemned by city engineers," he said.