PEORIA — Peoria Riverfront Museum attendance projections apparently have been lowered 25 percent, based on figures from a museum official quoted by a local newspaper.
Toni Tripp, vice president of marketing and communications at the Peoria Riverfront Museum, told the Peoria Journal Star that “about 180,000 people are expected to visit the museum over the course of the year; which assumes about 500 people walk through daily.” That marks a significant decrease in the number of patrons that museum officials have heretofore predicted.
When the museum’s operating budget was being put together in 2007, Lakeview Museum, consultant White Oak Associates, and Caterpillar, Inc., predicted the museum would see 240,000 visitors per year, or 667 visitors per day. A detailed report showing these figures is still available on Peoria County’s website. The latest projections cut those original numbers by a fourth.
The decrease in attendance means lower revenues for the museum, which means a much larger endowment would be needed to sustain the operating budget. The 2007 budget projections said that a $6.75 million endowment was needed if the museum met its projections at 100%. At 90% of projections, a $13.5 million endowment would be needed. No scenario was given for the museum potentially meeting only 75% of projections, but the endowment needed under that scenario would clearly be more than the museum’s current $10 million target.
A big part of the discussion leading up to the successful passage of a .25% sales tax increase to help build the museum centered on whether the operating budget of the museum would be sustainable. At that time, museum officials touted the large, regional draw of an IMAX theater showing first-run movies at night and museum gallery attendance that was on par with other museums nationwide used as benchmarks. Since that time, the museum abandoned the IMAX brand to go with little-known giant-screen cinema company Global Immersion, decided that showing first-run movies did not fit with their mission, and now have lowered their overall attendance projections.
A request for comment from Toni Tripp went unanswered.