Published - January, 9, 2006
Attendance shortfall grounds upgrade
Troy Moon
@PensacolaNewsJournal.com
It's 11 a.m. and the doors are open, but on this weekday, the interior of the National Museum of Naval Aviation resembles an airplane graveyard.
One side of the cavernous museum is completely empty of life. On the other side, a group of five people take a guided tour through the hulking aircraft exhibit. It's almost as if they have the 291,000-square-foot museum to themselves.
It's quite a contrast to just a few years back, when nearly 1 million people a year visited the museum, making it the Pensacola Bay Area's most popular tourist attraction.
But this is post-Hurricane Ivan.
The number of visitors to the museum, which houses more than 130 aircraft and spacecraft, has dropped dramatically, and new construction that would nearly double the museum's size has been put off.
Before 2004, the museum averaged 800,000 to 1 million visitors each year. In 2004, when the museum was closed for a month because of Hurricane Ivan, 650,000 visited. Last year, the number dropped to 508,672.
"Not as many people are visiting the Gulf Coast,'' said retired Navy Capt. Charles Ellis, the museum foundation's deputy chief executive officer. "And not as many people visited the museum as we would have liked.''
Before Hurricane Ivan hit in September 2004, about 80 percent of visitors came from outside the Pensacola Bay Area and about 70 percent from out of state, museum officials said.
Now, in light of the tourism slowdown, the museum plans to cut back on advertising in distant cities and instead try to lure visitors closer to home, said Fred Geiger, the museum's temporary marketing director and full-time IMAX Theater director.
"We're not going to try to spend the money to attract the market from Chicago,'' he said. "We're going to look at the surrounding 150 miles.''
Besides sagging attendance, another setback for the museum was the postponement of construction that was supposed to begin this month on the proposed National Flight Academy.
Construction was postponed in October when museum officials announced that soaring building costs -- in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's strike to the west of here last summer as well as Ivan -- have raised the cost of the project from $35 million to between $50 million and $60 million.
The 245,000-square-foot academy would provide weeklong programs in math, science and flight for about 4,000 seventh- to 12th-graders annually.
The museum has raised $34 million for the project, only $1 million short of the original projected cost.
"But two hurricanes escalated costs beyond our wildest dreams,'' Geiger said.
Museum officials hope to break ground next January but won't do it until all the money is raised.
"We're still hitting individuals for contributions,'' Ellis said. "We're looking toward corporations and also pursuing educational grants at the federal and state levels. But our requirement is that we don't stick a shovel in the ground until the money is raised.''
Still, there have been bright spots at the museum.
Those who do visit still leave impressed.
"My father was in Vietnam, so it's really neat for me to see all this,'' said Teri Nicholson of Houston, who visited the museum for the first time last week. "It makes you proud of the country when you see all this (military) strength.''
The museum also has been averaging nearly 100 schoolchildren each weekday attending the Flight Adventure Deck, which offers educational day-trips to middle school students.
And some days are better than others.
Three days after visitors were counted on one hand in the middle of the day, the museum was packed with nearly 100 visitors -- many of them attending a retirement ceremony in the museum's atrium. Other visitors filled the expanded Cubi Bar Cafe, eating lunch and looking out at the shining aircraft of yesterday.
"Oh, I think it's great,'' said Dot Simpson of Tallahassee, while eating a sandwich at the cafe. "There's just so much history here. I don't know much about airplanes, but there's so much other stuff, too.'
As I understand, it is also a big pain in the b-tt to get on base since 911. I hear you can't come in the main gate, you have to around to the backside.
Anyway--hope it picks up.
Robbie
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Just kick around that thought (as my Dad used to say) Lets see whats happens. H-ll will let them Yankee Snowball Militia Boys come on down! Just a thought?