By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
Representatives of the Joplin Museum Complex on Monday night asked the City Council to allow the museum to relocate to Memorial Hall, and to pose a sales tax to pay for remodeling and operations. The conversion cost is estimated at $7 million.
The proposal gained the informal approval of a majority of council members. Mayor Gary Shaw asked the council to wait until its next regular meeting, slated for Dec. 21, to authorize the museum board and the city staff to proceed with exploration of the plan. The mayor said he wasn’t opposed to the plan on first blush, but he would like more time to think about the proposal before advancing it.
A majority of the council disagreed with the mayor and informally approved a motion to have an ordinance authorizing a ballot question presented at a future meeting, perhaps in January.
Brad Belk, director of the museum complex, told the council that the plan would give the museum the expansion space it needs to house collections that are in storage. It would make the museum a visitor destination on Seventh Street, the former U.S. Route 66, and place it near downtown revitalization efforts. It also would preserve Memorial Hall, where use has been spotty for several years, Belk said.
Recognizing that the hall is a site dedicated to commemoration of those who served in wars, museum representatives propose to establish a veterans’ wing to interpret the local effort made in wars and to preserve the stories of service members and local families affected by war.
City Attorney Brian Head said he would want the opinion of an outside attorney that the covenants adopted when Memorial Hall was built in 1923 would allow for its use as something other than a meeting hall and public auditorium.
Angie Besendorfer, assistant superintendent of the Joplin School District and a member of the museum board, made a presentation about the plan. The museum is a place for children to learn about science and local history, and all district students are taken there for a visit in the third grade.
“It’s difficult to bring in large groups of kids and manage them” because of the size of the current museum complex, she told the council.
Space needs
The museum has outgrown its 8,000 square feet of display and meeting space, though it possesses what visitors describe as an important collection of minerals that were part of the mining boom that developed Joplin and the Tri-State Mining District that included Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma.
Besendorfer said that when she became a board member and first toured all the nooks and crannies inside the museum at Schifferdecker Park, “I was so impressed yet dismayed that we have phenomenal collections, yet they are in the basement (in storage). Sadly, we have to say ‘no’ to (more) collections. We don’t have the space to save them for later.”
Kyle Denham, a Joplin architect, showed the council a proposed floor plan if the hall were remodeled for a museum. A new main floor would be built at what now is the lobby level, creating a central reception and meeting area. Exhibition areas would be in three wings that would be created.
The balcony would be converted into classrooms and a science lab in the front lobby area, and a lecture area in the central balcony.
The dressing rooms would become office and staging spaces.
Denham estimated the cost of remodeling and furnishing the exhibit spaces at $7 million.
Sales tax law
Greg Bricker, with George K. Baum & Co., a Kansas City bonding firm, said he initially explored the idea of using a property tax to pay for the construction and for operating expenses. He said he then learned that a special state law had been advanced several years ago particularly for Joplin to allow for a museum sales tax of up to a half-cent.
He told the council he believes that a sales tax of one-sixth of a cent would generate about $1.5 million to $2 million a year to pay for the remodeling and the museum’s operating expenses. He said the sales tax could be reduced when the construction bonds were paid off to an amount that would pay the operating expenses.
The museum board would like to put the issue on the April ballot if the council approves. The filing deadline for the April ballot is Jan. 26, Bricker said.
Election favored
A majority of council members said they should not prevent voters from deciding the issue. They gave an informal OK to consider a formal ordinance, though member Phil Stinnett said the informal vote does not mean it’s a “done deal.”
After the meeting, Belk said he is excited about the possibility of moving the museum into the historic building.
“It makes me think of the people who have worked so hard for the museum over the years,” he said, and the people who built and supported Memorial Hall. “It means everything to us” to expand, he said.
Clair Goodwin, president of the museum board, said he was pleased that the proposal received a positive reaction from the council.
“All we ask is they allow the voters of Joplin to make the decision,” he said. “We still have a long way to go.”
Display space
Converting Memorial Hall into a museum would expand display and activity space from 8,000 square feet at the current location to 24,000 square feet, the City Council was told.
