Bad juju

The front page of the Roanoke Times reported that the City of Roanoke will match up to $500,000 for the Mill Mountain Zoo. Before I go on, I want to first say that I'm glad to see the money headed up the mountain where it's been needed for a long time. I'm glad that somebody realized that there's an attraction in Roanoke that DOESN'T resemble the Flying Nun in glass and steel.

That said, I have the following question to ask:

WHERE THE HELL IS OUR MONEY?

For obvious reasons, I can't post this on the VMT blog, but I was nearly in an outrage this morning when I heard about this. I've been begging to put something on our blog about it, but I doubt they'll let me off my leash on this. So, here I stew.

There are lots of attractions in town that could do a lot with half a million dollars. To be sure, the Mill Mountain Zoo is absolutely one of them. Meanwhile, the Virginia Museum of Transportation hasn't heard word one from the city about its grant proposal -- the same city that owns 45% of the museum's collection, the same city whose very story is told more vividly by our museum than by any other in town, the same city that grew up around the rails whose heritage is preserved and interpreted at 303 Norfolk Avenue. How much money are we getting? How much should we get?

The building is OLD. We're the only museum in town that hasn't had a complete renovation in more than twenty years. Scratch that. We've NEVER had a complete renovation. We got the middle portion of the building after our old building was flooded in 1985. Then we got what will become the aviation gallery, then the west end, and finally the offices of the Shenandoah division, all spread out over the course of 20 years. At no time was there ever a renovation that spanned all four of those segments. Some of the electrical wiring in our building dates back to when it was first installed... IN 1918! For the love of God, the last time that wiring was checked was during the flipping influenza epidemic!

So how much should we get? We won't get enough to renovate. We know that. Will we get enough to just maintain what we have? Doubtful. Roanoke gave us $60,000 two years ago, and $52,000 last year. For perspective, our monthly operating costs are around $30,000. We could cut that figure in half with a high-quality renovation of our insulation and outer walls, as our gas bill alone during the months of December, January, and February averaged $5,000 monthly. Estimated cost on that is about a quarter-million dollars, just half of what the zoo just got. Again, I don't begrudge the zoo their tuppence; they got the shaft from the state which gave them an insulting $10,000.

We held an event in our auto gallery on the night of February 17th. 48 hours prior to the event, we started up the heaters. The temperature at that time was 47 degrees F. After 48 hours of continual operation at full blast, those heaters managed to raise the temperature to just 51 degrees F. The cost of running the heaters for 48 hours? $481. $10 an hour being just thrown away (or blown away, more accurately) because the space is a giant wind tunnel sucking warm air directly outside. The seals around the roll doors are a joke, half the windows in the upper portion of the gallery are stuck open, and there's a gaping hole at the far end of the gallery leading into a 7,000 square foot portion of unheated, unsealed open air.

Now imagine trying to cool that air in the summer.

The zoo needed money. I just hope the city remembers some other groups in the midst of its benevolence. Why do I get the feeling we're about to get screwed?

Again.