Bert Caldwell: Backers of aerospace museum prepare for takeoff

For attention-grabbing, it’s hard to beat a B-52, so picture one poised just 200 feet from the westbound lanes of Interstate 90. Then try to keep your eyes on the road.

Supporters of a proposed Armed Forces & Aerospace Museum believe that kind of head-turning appeal will pull as many as 80,000 visitors a year into the airy, hangar-ish building that would be erected just behind the bomber. The building’s 24,430-square-foot first phase would house displays of memorabilia from all branches of the armed services, a theater, classroom, restoration area, café and gift shop.

A second phase of equal size would provide more indoor display area to complement the tarmac outside. With its direct access to Spokane International Airport, the site at Electric Avenue and Geiger Boulevard would allow vintage airplanes to taxi right to the museum.

Supporters say many owners of World War I, World War II and Cold War era aircraft are willing to have those planes exhibited in Spokane — if there is a suitable showcase. They are convinced they have the site and design for just such a building. What they do not have is $10 million.

Despite a decade of refining the design, finding a matchless location and securing 10,000 artifacts, the project has struggled to get airborne. More than 1,100 businesses and individuals have contributed $1.7 million, but no major donors have made the six-or seven-figure pledge that fund raisers can rally to.

Yet, museum President Arne Weinman says the business case for the facility is overwhelming.

The keys to success are visibility, ease of entry for visitors and runway access, all of which the museum would have in spades.

“Those things almost guarantee viability,” he says.

Museum backers project an operating budget of $777,777, and income of $785,000. That assumes 60,000 visitors, plus student tours, conferences and special events. If the B-52 works its magic and attracts somewhat less than 1 percent of passing automobile traffic on I-90, the visitor number goes to 80,000.

Half the visitors would be from out of the area. Assuming they spend $200 a day, and applying a 2.7 multiplier, revenues to community businesses run to almost $26 million. The state would collect $1.7 million annually off those expenditures, Spokane County $544,000.

That alone, argues Weinman, should justify $5 million in state funding. But the museum’s potential as a history classroom adds to the bargain.

Students will be able to handle many exhibits. They can watch experts restore artifacts that have been warehoused for decades. How many kids would not want to take the controls of a railcar-mounted B-52 flight simulator?

The museum could be a resource for 300,000 K-12 students throughout the Inland Northwest, some of whom now take expensive overnight trips to The Museum of Flight in Seattle. Archives open to students and professionals contain 50,000 documents.

“It’s a heck of an investment because of the return,” says Weinman, a former commander at Fairchild Air Force Base who is now a contractor.

Madsen Mitchell Evenson & Conrad designed the building. Craig Conrad says it was also intended to be an event facility. The Museum of Flight has been very popular for business functions, he notes.

A top-notch museum to complement the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture and other community amenities will enhance Spokane’s stature as a desirable place to live, he adds.

The case is compelling enough that the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce put funding for the museum on top of its Legislative agenda. But the project is not on Gov. Chris Gregoire’s capital budget, and even in a year when the dollars will flow freely there may be only so much the state is willing to do for Spokane. There are a lot of other things on the community wish list.

But this opportunity is not open-ended. A site as attractive as that proposed for the museum cannot be tied up indefinitely. The devotion of Weinman and many more like him who have honed the museum plan for a decade is not inexhaustible. Nor is the patience of outsiders willing to bring planes and other artifacts who might wonder how such a facility cannot catch a tailwind in a community and state whose history is so intertwined with that of the armed forces.

To Weinman, failure to pull off the museum plan would have consequences beyond the material, historical or educational. Every uniform, every document, every plane has a story behind it.

“I know what happens if you don’t have a place to tell the story,” he says.