At a press conference on Friday, July 19, the province provided an update on the status of the $303.9 million, two-phase Belleville Terminal redevelopment in Victoria’s Inner Harbour.
The goal of the project is to upgrade the 31-year-old terminal, which was built as a temporary means to accommodate tourists visiting Victoria for the 1994 Commonwealth Games.
Construction crews are busy at work on phase-one of the project, which involves building a temporary terminal that ferry operators can use to drop-off and pick-up passengers, while Belleville is redeveloped in phase-two.
The province said this temporary structure will be complete at the end of 2024. Phase-two will begin in 2025, with a 2028 completion date.
B.C.’s minister of transportation Rob Fleming said at the press conference that the development will help Clipper and Black Ball ferry operators, both of which use the terminal to sail between Victoria and Washington State, accommodating more passengers.
“The limitations of the site have always restricted the number of tourists that can come,” said B.C.’s minister of transportation Rob Fleming. “Clipper operates at typically about two-thirds of its capacity because that’s all the space there is for passengers to muster and get on the ship.”
The minister added that the more passengers the terminal can accommodate, the more the region will benefit. In the province's 2023 business case for the project, it anticipated that the terminal upgrade will help create 3,200 jobs and spark $257 million in visitor spending over the next 20 years.
The main reason the province moved to update the terminal, however, was to comply with the Canada-U.S. land, rail, marine and air transport preclearance agreement. This bilateral agreement, which both countries agreed to in 2015, requires that Canada accommodate American customs and immigration officials ance vice-versa.
"If the project does not continue to advance, and preclearance at Belleville Terminal is not achieved, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] will withdraw their services permanently from southern Vancouver Island, which would result in existing ferry operations being shut down and/or significantly reduced," the province said in their 2023 business case.
"The business leadership in this community knows we rely on and benefit from international travel," said Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA Grace Lore, who was also at the press conference. "We’ve got to support and build that infrastructure to make sure that people can keep coming here."
