will be one of the
features when Heritage
Harbor is completed.
Even without the passage of the $59 million bond issue, construction on the Heritage Harbor Museum continues — but at a slower pace.
Albert T. Klyberg, executive director of the Heritage Harbor Museum, said the 18 organizations involved with the museum creation have promised to continue working to make the museum a reality, even if they have to do it “in steps and phases.
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“There is no way that this program is going to stop,” he said. “We have enough in place to do that, and we want people to know that this is not stalled in any kind of permanent way.”
Still, Klyberg admits, the original plan to covert the former Narragansett Electric South Street Station power plant into the 180,000 square-foot interactive Heritage Harbor Museum has hit a slight bump in the road.
“The true answer (about the failure of the bond issue) is that it’s more of a delay,” said Albert T. Klyberg, executive director of the Heritage Harbor Museum. “Our ability to contract with architects to work on the interior design of the build has been delayed by the bond issue. We are on pause right now.”
But what started as a vision more than 16 years ago to establish an institution dedicated to celebrating the values and traditions of Rhode Island’s varied cultural and ethnic groups has already turned into somewhat of a reality.
Last year, renovation began on the exterior of the old Narragansett Electric South Street Station power plant, closed in 1994, to turn it into the future home of Heritage Harbor. Considered Phase I of the three-phase plan, the $4 million exterior restoration project, includes replacing large sections of the roof, removal of the adornments, repair to the brick work and the removal of loose glass from the window’s building. Currently running on schedule, this phase is expected to be completed in early summer, Klyberg said. The Smithfield-based A.F. Lusi Construction Company is doing the work.
“At the present time, work on the exterior of the building continues,” he said.
Klyberg said the goal now is to secure revenue bonds — bonds that must be paid back, and can be issued at any time.
“We have to look at other options,” he said. ” And this is one of them.”
Larry Kunkel, president of Kunkel Strategic Services, an economics and strategic consulting firm hired by the Heritage Harbor Museum to create a business plan for the group said securing revenues bonds isn’t a new idea for the group.
“You never put all of your eggs in one basket,” he said. “Obviously we had developed alternative funding strategies prior to the election and this was part of that.”
According to Kunkel, to secure revenue bonds the group must show a stream of revenue, which, he said, will come from a surcharge on ticket prices. Kunkel expects the bond application to be completed in the next three months.
Klyberg is cautious about raising its ticket prices saying, “we need to be careful and not promise too much.”
But according to Kunkel, even with the revenue bond surcharge, studies show museum tickets will be 17 percent below the average price of other competing cultural attractions in New England, such as the Mystic Aquarium and the Boston Museum of Science.
And while Rhode Island is the 47th state to create a cultural museum, Kunkel said is it the first not to receive most of its funding from the state.
“One of the things we have always thought was that the state would step up and provide more for us,” he said. “In 92 percent of the cases across the country where there are state cultural museums, the primary funding for construction and operation comes from the state’s government. The state of Rhode Island is choosing not to do that at this time.”
But, Klyberg notes, the museum has already raised about $30 million for exhibits and displays. Plans for the three-story museum call for a life-sized replica of a Caravel (a 15th century vessel that brought the first Europeans to America), a working diner, model railroad, and a Corliss steam engine.
“We have all the programs ready to roll,” he said. “It’s a bit annoying.”
Also available are the exhibits sponsored by local companies like Verizon, Textron, Nortek and The Providence Journal, as well as a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution.
“There is money to do infrastructure for the exhibits, and if we have to we can put them in the first segment of the building,” he said. “But we hope not to build in segments.”
The participating members believe the museum could attract close to 300,000 visitors and generate close to $25 million a year in revenue, placing it among the top 20 visitor attractions in New England and producing $1.6 million in new taxes for the state.
Klyberg said what makes this process so difficult is that many of the state’s voters had no idea what the museum was when they went into the voting booth in November. In addition, he said, many people thought the museum to be “a Providence project,” which it’s not.
“There is no basis for those comments at all,” he said. “This is as much a museum telling the story of Newport, Westerly, Woonsocket, and Warwick as it is about Providence.”
