Corvette museum wants to keep sinkhole

A massive sinkhole that swallowed eight prized sports cars at the National Corvette Museum has become such a popular attraction that officials want to preserve it – and may even put one or two of the crumpled cars back inside the hole.

The board of the museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, said Wednesday it is in favor of preserving a large section of the sinkhole that opened up beneath the museum in February. It happened when the museum was closed, and no one was injured.

What started as a tragedy has turned into an opportunity to lure more people off a nearby interstate to visit the museum, which struggled in prior years to keep its doors open, museum officials said.

Attendance was up nearly 60 percent from March to the start of this week, compared to the year-ago period, museum officials said. Sign-ups for museum memberships are up sharply, as are merchandise and cafe sales at the museum.