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Last Resort?: In Light of Current Situation, Relocating Benefits City, State
WAITE RAWLS
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Sunday, August 28, 2005
# Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a presentation given to a July meeting of the Virginia General Assembly Joint Subcommittee on the Museum and White House of the Confederacy. The subcommittee is scheduled to meet again tomorrow at 2 p.m. in the General Assembly Building.
If [visitors] can't get here, we can't teach, and they won't learn. We simply fail in our mission [to educate about the Civil War], and the Commonwealth and Richmond have failed one of their greatest assets . . . .
[W]e must create precedent to deal with our reality [that we are simply in the way of VCU's expansion, and its expansion is simply in the way of our visitors]. Traditional preservation techniques, such as adaptive reuse, cannot be applied because the cost to the public of the loss of the White House as an accessible historic resource is simply too high.
Preservationists all agree that moving a historic structure is done only as a last resort, but they can't or won't define "last resort." We are reminded of Justice Potter Stewart's quote about pornography: "We can't define it, but we know it when we see it."
Even if we cannot define last resort, we think you can see it . . . .
At our previous level of visitation [91,000 visitors per year], we were self-sufficient . . . . At our current level of 54,000 visitors, we are running a significant annual deficit of about $400,000, which has been financed by depleting our unrestricted endowment. Even this level of visitation is unsustainable. If history repeats, we will see a further decline in our museum visitation. If we run our forecast to 35,000 or so visitors . . . the deficit becomes insurmountable.
As fiduciaries, we know we must deal with our situation, but what are we to do?
Museum Has Three Options
We will now discuss the three options that we have identified.
Option 1 is to stay and gut it out.
There are distinct advantages to this option. It leaves the White House where it was built and where it was historically significant. It leaves the museum with the White House and where it was founded. The museum does not abandon the neighborhood.
There are significant disadvantages.
The museum loses more money as visitation continues to decline. We have investigated making up that revenue with a capital campaign. According to a study conducted by a national fund-raising consultancy, new donors willing to contribute significantly to the museum will not make that investment if the museum stays put because these people consider it a losing business proposition.
As we see it, that leaves us with only two options if we stay: a sale of assets to finance operations or a significant annual public subsidy. Additionally, there is a significant chance in this scenario that much of the museum's collection would leave Richmond and the state.
Significant Disadvantages
The next option examined is to move the museum and leave the White House at the Clay Street site.
Again, there are distinct advantages.
The White House stays where it was built and where it was historically significant. We think we could locate an easy-to-find, good site for the museum, albeit perhaps not in Richmond . . . .
Again, there are significant disadvantages.
This is the most expensive option with separate front desk and curatorial staffing for the White House and museum.
As part of this option, many have suggested a shuttle bus connection. Responses to our inquiries in the historic/cultural field say that the transportation system between two separated sites is prohibitively expensive, and that the majority of visitors choose not to make the trip to the other site.
There could be an even more significant drop in visitation to the White House, resulting in lost revenues and mission fulfillment. Operating and marketing synergies between the White House and the museum would be lost.
And, importantly, VCU would gain very little and may be far less interested in acquiring the property if the White House were to remain.
Now we need to consider the option of moving both the museum and the White House. Let me assure you that, before the past year, we have been very reluctant to even discuss moving the White House. But reality has forced us to this consideration, and we have talked with many, many people about it in the past year. This has led us to discover, for instance, that the White House can be moved, basically intact.
There are very distinct advantages to this option. Easier access to both the museum and the White House should result in a significant increase in visitation and revenue from entry fees, making us financially self-sufficient again.
Opportunity to Expand
Increased numbers of visitors will give us greater mission fulfillment, and we will preserve the synergies between the White House and the museum.
There is a great opportunity to expand services and education, including exterior interpretation of the White House.
And this is the best opportunity for a successful capital campaign -- donors like the notion of expanded mission, and they like the notion of financial stability. Finally, but importantly, the hospital would benefit greatly from its use of this key piece of land.
The disadvantages are also important. It will certainly be expensive to build a new museum and to move the White House.
There are not many good sites in Richmond with the appropriate space, but we think several are available. We would lose the intangible of the connection between the White House, its original site, and the State Capitol -- however compromised it may be today. We would lose our designation as a National Historic Landmark, although we could apply for relisting. And we would be leaving our sister historic sites in downtown . . . .
[T]hese are difficult deliberations, and the decisions are not clear. There are no good precedents that we can discover. We have focused on these three options and variations on their themes, and we may have not discovered other viable options.
In closing, we have grappled with this creeping problem [of MCV expansion] for decades, mostly by ourselves. This time, as a last resort, we are coming to you for help.
Waite Rawls is executive director of the Museum of the Confederacy.