Air museum fund-raiser takes off
Ambitious goal is to raise 55 million for up to a dozen new buildings
Friday, 30, 2004BY JOHN MULCAHY
News Staff Reporter
The volunteers and vintage airplane buffs who make up the Yankee Air Museum have proven their mettle over the years, especially in finding World War II aircraft and restoring them to flyable quality.
Now the little museum crammed into a historic hangar at Willow Run Airport is showing its pluck again, launching a 15-year, $55 million capital campaign to build as many as a dozen new buildings for the storage, restoration and display of the museum's aircraft and thousands of other artifacts related to flying.
About 35 museum devotees and friends gathered Thursday in the clubhouse at the Eagle Crest Golf Club in Ypsilanti Township to kick off the campaign and witness the signing of a contract with two architectural firms that will work on the project.
The first objective will be to raise $5 million to build a new hangar for the museum's four flyable vintage aircraft: B-17 and B-25 bombers, a C-47 cargo plane and a Stinson aircraft. That will get those planes out of the World War II hangar so that it can be restored. The new building will also become the restoration area for other aircraft.
"We want all the flyables to be in a secure new building and outside of the old wooden building," said Jon Stevens, Yankee Air Museum president.
Once restored, the historic old hangar will be used for display of aircraft and artifacts.
More long range, the museum could include a library, a conference center, a section dedicated to futuristic aviation, a rebuilt version of the air base that existed at Willow Run during World War II and a theme restaurant, said Dennis Norton, chairman of the Michigan Aerospace Foundation, established about two years ago to raise funds for the project.
"With a few more buildings out there, we know we could produce a better museum," Norton said. The museum may even start a charter high school focussed on aviation, he said.
Norton said he expected the majority of the funds to be raised from private donors, with some coming from foundations.
To put the fund-raising goal in perspective, the museum, founded in 1981, has annual revenues of about $1.3 million, much of it from selling flights on its B-17 and B-25 airplanes, Stevens said. About 35,000 people visited the museum last year.
The museum has 3,300 members, most living in southeast Michigan, but others are spread out across 30 states, Stevens said.
Museum Director David Steiner of Ann Arbor said the museum, though small, is unique for having flyable vintage aircraft and for allowing visitors to walk among the planes while restoration is going on.
"If you are the least bit interested in airplanes and are not a member (of the museum), you are missing out big time," he said.
John Mulcahy can be reached at
jmulcahy@annarbornews.com or at (734) 994-6858.
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1083336716277540.xml
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