The Journal Star included two articles today — I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more in the coming weeks — championing the proposed riverfront museum. One was an editorial (“Boost museum with old-fashioned political campaign“), and the other a Paul Gordon business article (“Museum would be true local project“).

First up, the editorial. Here’s their take on why the museum doesn’t have broader support:

Our read is that most locals are not exactly against the museum so much as not emphatically for it. They’re skeptical that The Block will draw visitors beyond this immediate area, that it won’t require ongoing tax support for operations, that this is “absolutely critical” to the region. Remarkably, some even doubt whether central Illinois’ history merits remembrance and celebration.

That’s all true, but they’re missing the bigger point. This museum is a bait and switch. We were supposed to be getting a Peoria history museum as part of a new-urban-style development. Instead, they’re wanting to move Lakeview Museum to the riverfront, add a token amount of “regional” history to the permanent display area, throw in a bunch of other stuff, and house it in a downsized, inefficient, suburban building — and they want our tax dollars to fund it.

It’s not that people are against a museum — it’s that they’re against this plan for a museum. It’s too much money in too small a space for too little value added. Instead of spending their wad on a big marketing campaign, they would be better off spending that money to rework their plan for the Sears block.

As I have suggested before, I propose that they leave Lakeview where it is and keep it as the art and science museum. We already have it, and there’s no compelling reason to move it to the riverfront on the public’s dime. Then, on the Sears block, they build a new history and achievement museum (with an IMAX theater), but they build it on a small portion of the block in a multi-level, urban-style building. This will reduce the construction costs considerably while simultaneously giving them additional space. The rest of the block would be put out for proposals from developers for mixed-use development, including residential and retail urban development. This would infuse the block with activity around the clock, benefiting not only the museum and IMAX theater, but the riverfront and the rest of downtown. I bet they could do that without even having to go to the public to request a tax increase.

Moving on to Paul Gordon’s column, he focuses on a memorandum of understanding “between Caterpillar Inc., the Museum Collaboration Group and the West-Central Illinois Building Trades Council.”

The memo […] spells out the responsibilities of each of the partners in getting the project built if the funding goal is reached in the next three years.

But it’s the bottom line numbers that will bring people together for the project.

It will keep 250 to 300 construction workers on the job each month for two or more years (an estimated 420,000-plus man hours), keep the projected $77 million in total construction costs – including an estimated $45 million in wages – in central Illinois and serve as a renewed commitment to Peoria by its largest employer.

That sounds great until you remember that your tax dollars are going to be paying the lion’s share ($35 million) of those $45 million in wages. And you’re going to paying those taxes forever — long after those two years of construction jobs are complete. Why? Well, first of all, because taxes, once established, never get rescinded. Witness the HRA taxes for the Civic Center which Peorians were promised would only be temporary. Secondly, the museum has a projected annual operating budget of $4 million. That means they’d have to get 1,000 visitors a week paying $10.95 admission (for reference, Lakeview currently charges $6 admission for adults, $4 for kids, and according to their website, “The Museum has a membership base of 4,000 and attracts 125,000 visitors annually”). So I think it’s safe to say that they’ll have to use tax revenue to cover their operational costs… forever.

But hey, we’ll have two years of local construction jobs, so that’s a good trade-off, right?