County wants museum to fly

County commissioners sent a $50,000 message Thursday to state legislators: There is local support for a proposed $12.5 million Armed Forces and Aerospace Museum at Spokane’s western gateway.

“I think it’s a great project,” Commissioner Bonnie Mager said, moving to chip in $50,000 from next year’s county budget.

“I have a 14-year-old son who can hardly wait until you open the doors,” Mager said earlier this week when museum proponents requested the contribution.

Proponents believe the museum, designed with help from the designer and first director of Seattle’s Museum of Flight, can be self-sufficient while contributing more than $25 million to Spokane County’s economy.

It would feature displays of historic military aircraft, including a World War I-era Curtis Jenny biplane and the third Stearman trainer to roll off the assembly line. The Stearman is a fabric-covered, open-cockpit biplane used to train pilots early in World War II.

“It’s a goggles-and-gloves airplane,” said society President Arne Weinman. “I think there are three instruments in there.”

The museum would be highly visible at the Geiger exit of Interstate 90, and traveling exhibits of vintage aircraft could be flown in at the nearby Spokane International Airport. Plans call for moving a decommissioned B-52 bomber, now displayed at Fairchild Air Force Base, to the museum grounds.

Weinman predicted a work room, where visitors can watch vintage aircraft being restored, will be “a real favorite.”

The retired Air Force colonel – commander of the 92nd Bombardment Wing at Fairchild Air Force Base from 1989 to 1991 – said a vintage flight simulator in a train car will allow museum visitors to climb into the “cockpit” of a B-52 bomber and see how pilots used to be trained.

Commissioner Todd Mielke was absent Thursday, but commission Chairman Mark Richard said he thought all three commissioners “are strongly supportive” of plans for a tourist-luring museum.

Indeed, all the commissioners pledged Tuesday to help the Armed Forces and Aerospace Museum Society lobby the Legislature early next year for a $5 million grant.

The society developed its museum plans with a $295,000 state grant awarded two years ago, but came up empty-handed early this year when it first asked the Legislature for construction money.

Richard said the county contribution is intended to alleviate doubts among legislators and others about whether the long-simmering project has the local support and leadership necessary to get it off the ground.

Those concerns have surfaced in “coffee cup chats” with local economic development leaders and legislators at a Greater Spokane Inc. lobbying reception in Olympia in January, Richard said.

He said legislators praised the idea and the artifacts the society has assembled, “but we kept hearing, ‘Local support and broader base.’ “

“I think we’ve all heard that,” Mager agreed.

Mielke warned proponents Tuesday that some Spokane Airport Board members also are skeptical, and that the society may face competition for the museum’s planned site in the Spokane International Airport Business Park.

So commissioners planned to tell the society not to expect future contributions unless it makes progress in recruiting business and civic leaders with fundraising skills.

“I don’t want to see this money that we’re investing on behalf of county residents not get the appropriate leverage that we’re looking for,” Richard said.

“We’ve been trying to diversify all along,” Weinman said. “We would like to have some movers and shakers on the board.”

Although the society board of directors is heavy with career military retirees, Weinman said a 23-member advisory board with fewer time demands has been more successful in recruiting people with financial expertise.

He said the 450-member society has raised about $2.1 million in cash and pledges, of which about $1.3 million will be available for construction.

Supporters have struggled to establish an all-branches military museum in the Spokane area since 1996, when the Air Force announced it would all but close the Heritage Museum at Fairchild Air Force Base.

The museum had more than 7,000 artifacts from Inland Northwest military history, some of them dating back to the early days of the Fort Wright Army post. The Air Force planned keep about 1,500 artifacts in a small room at Fairchild, and ship the rest to the main Air Force museum in Ohio.

Museum supporters were told to raise about $500,000 in two months to prove they had a viable plan to retain the collection. They did, and the Air Force – with subsequent congressional prodding – agreed to keep the artifacts here. With the addition of a local Navy collection, the museum society now has 10,000 items to display.

Supporters reached an agreement in 2003 with local aviation enthusiast Ed “Skeeter” Carlson to display 17 of his historic planes at the museum, along with seven aircraft from the Fairchild collection. A MiG 17 also has been donated to the museum.

Proponents wanted to open at least part of the museum in 2005, but now hope for a 2010 opening.