Art museum growth plan gets boost from Shelby

The Huntsville Museum of Art is planning a multimillion-dollar expansion and this week received a $500,000 boost from U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby.

Clayton Bass, museum president and chief executive officer, said the money approved Tuesday by a Senate appropriation subcommittee chaired by Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, would be used to begin financing a future facelift.

The proposed $10 million to $12 million expansion plan includes a 300-seat auditorium, a family interactive gallery, 9,000 square feet of gallery space, underground parking and an entrance from Big Spring International Park on the museum's west side.

The design concepts are still preliminary, but Bass and museum board treasurer Lee R. Hoekenschnieder said the expansion would not infringe on the park.

"What we don't want to do is to intrude on anything that is not already part of the footprint of the museum," Hoekenschnieder said. "That's a given. Whatever we do will have to be in the confines of the footprint of the existing museum that was allocated to us."

The expansion proposal is a "master plan that would actually enhance the park and not take any more park," Bass said. "Instead, we could build over our existing footprint."

Increasing gallery space would allow parts of the museum to stay open while exhibits are being set up elsewhere. In the past, the museum has been forced to close sometimes due to construction hassles associated with large exhibits.

"What we are trying to do is add some additional space that would allow us in our exhibition programs to never have to shut down to that extent," Bass said.

Bass said he likes the idea of adding an entrance from the park.

"We are very oriented toward Church Street and we would remain that way," he said. "But, in this configuration, it would allow us to have a second west-facing front door."

The need for parking close to the museum triggered the notion of an underground garage.

Hoekenschnieder said the expansion could be done vertically, on top of the facility or where the loading dock runs south of the building along Church Street.

But no decisions have been made on a final design.

"We have not as a board even sat down to say, here are the priorities in the manners that we'd like to integrate into the construction project," Hoekenschnieder said. "That's one of the things that we're trying to schedule in the very near future - to sit down and have that kind of discussion."

The museum board and staff have made presentations to the Madison County Commission, Huntsville City Council and Shelby's office in Washington over the past three months.

Shelby, in a news release, said anticipation of a spike in the Madison County population from workers relocating here as part of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission decisions justified the appropriation. About 4,700 new jobs are expected to move to Redstone Arsenal by 2011 because of BRAC decisions, and about 5,000 contractor jobs could follow.

In a presentation to the county commission three weeks ago, Bass laid out the expansion plan and its nearly $12 million price tag.

Other than the proposed $500,000 injection into the museum's coffers from the federal government - which still must be approved by the full Senate and House - the museum board is still looking at ways to pay for the expansion.

Mayor Loretta Spencer says she likes what she has seen in the museum's initial proposal. She said museum officials have asked the city to help pay for the expansion. However, she said the museum should also be looking at private funding sources.

"The more sponsorships that they can have, the quicker they can meet their goal," Spencer said.

Madison County Commissioner Faye Dyer saw the museum's plans at the presentation to the commission, but said there was no formal request for money.

Hoekenschnieder said the museum is looking into all options, both public and private, and said the board wants to ensure the institution is on solid footing following the expansion.

"Part of it is to make sure we have the endowment that doesn't force us to be totally reliant on the city, the county, the federal government, the state or whomever for all of our money, day-in and day-out," he said.