Show me the... wait, where'd it go?

Museum life has its ups and downs. Saying something that trite is not only painful, but also painfully true.

An article in last week's Roanoke Times reports that the City of Roanoke has promised up to $500,000 in matching funds to the Mill Mountain Zoo for capital improvements. That is great news. We have some good friends at the zoo, and those facilities have been in need of repair and upgrading for some time. This was a long time coming for them, and hopefully worth the wait.

Meanwhile, the new Art Museum of Western Virginia is churning along, unfurling like a cross between the Flying Nun's habit and a vague monument to bourgeois taste (that's alright, because it fits in so seamlessly with Roanoke's general architectural scheme). All of this at $66 million. All kidding aside, we have some good friends at the art museum and we're happy they're receiving a new facility.

Naturally, one might think that with the city being so generous to the Mill Mountain Zoo and the Art Museum of Western Virginia, your Virginia Museum of Transportation might be on the eve of a great windfall, a financial bonanza that would be a new sunrise for the museum.

Not only was our grant proposal answered with a mere $24,900, but the latest kick in the teeth came when the city began soliciting bids for a strategic plan for the museum, funded by the Norfolk Southern Corporation. Let us be more clear. We're happy to receive a strategic plan, but the city has so far kept us out of the loop on the bidding process. We're sorry, City of Roanoke, but the last time we checked, we were still a private organization. Unless you're creating a strategic plan for the locomotives themselves, we think we've got a more than legitimate right to input on any and all decisions relating to this museum.

The City of Roanoke owns about 45% of our collection, including the only surviving Norfolk & Western Class J and Class A locomotives, and the largest collection of diesel locomotives in the south. The City of Roanoke, which cut our funding from $60,000* two years ago to $52,000 last year, already has a sizable investment in our museum. In many ways, our museum better than any other, tells the story of Roanoke. Further, admissions figures show that nearly 80% of our patrons come from out of town. How many other museums in Roanoke can boast that?

The building that houses that collection, tells that story, and draws those tourists was built in 1918. Some of the electrical wiring inside is original. More than 75% of the roll-down doors that line the front and rear of the building are in horrible states of repair, and their improper seals make for extremely inefficient heating and cooling. Moreover, damage from the storm last summer that ripped off about 10,000 square feet of our roof left two offices, a conference room, and a bathroom condemned due to water damage in the electrical system. Further, it forced the complete replacement of two HVAC units to heat and cool the building, not to mention a new roof which still hasn't been installed (it took nearly six months to receive the first check from the insurance company after lengthy negotiations and adjustments). If you came by the museum this winter, you discovered what those of us working here encountered daily -- no heat. That same storm tore the main gas line off the building like an old band-aid and permanently damaged the heaters up there.

Census data tells us that the Roanoke metropolitan area is home to roughly 200,000 people. If it costs 66 million dollars to build a new art museum, half a million dollars to restore the zoo to a high level of quality, and if there are more than 35 non-profit organizations in that same metropolitan area, the question is this:

Just how much money will be left for anybody?

We don't think we're more deserving than any other institution in town. Except, maybe we are. Roanoke's investment here has already been illustrated. So maybe we should ask, how much is it worth to protect and develop that investment? It's becoming increasingly clear what the city thinks.

* To put this figure in perspective, $60,000 covers slightly less than two months of our operating expenses.