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Kingston is looking to execute a seven-month lease with Correctional Services Canada (CSC) to allow access to Kingston Penitentiary (KP) for public tours and other tourism and filming activities.
“Basically this would be the city stepping in to help facilitate that so we would kind of take a more direct role where we would actually lease Kingston Pen from the Federal government, from Correction Services, for seven months from April through to November,” said Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson.
“It gives the city a little more control to be able to work with Tourism Kingston, to work with St. Lawrence Parks Commission that operates the tours,” he said. He added it would help the city “make sure that we’re able to get as much use from that property as possible.”
But this lease isn’t something the federal government will give the city for free.
“It’s about $450,000, which is pretty substantial,” Paterson said. “However, when we look at the potential revenues from filming and from tours, we think that there’s a very good chance that we’ll break even or maybe even come in on the black in that. So, obviously, that’s something where city staff have been doing their homework on this.”
Mayor Paterson says this lease will also create revenue opportunities through job creation and other tourism impacts.
“We think that there’s lots of revenues that can be earned, lots of economic impact of course from the tours and from filming,” he said.
“Just having that additional ability to bring in as much revenue as possible is really promising and we’re hoping for a big year ahead.”
The lease agreement between the city and CSC would be for seven months in 2022, with four optional seven-month extensions.
City staff would establish that the lease agreement could be cancelled should there be COVID-19 restrictions that would prevent most activities on the KP property in 2022.
They would also be directed to work with the Development Fund Committee to ensure that any potential deficit from KP operations will be covered.
This would make sure that property taxpayers are not funding any potential shortfalls.
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