Museum Proponents Confident of Winning
Despite Panel’s Report
Even after recent recommendations against mooring a floating museum in San Diego Bay, the project is a little worn from battle, but still alive. In fact, a local executive who is leading efforts to establish the Midway Museum at Navy Pier along the Embarcadero has said the project is still likely to be approved by the California Coastal Commission. “Everyone’s making this noise, but the truth is, we’ll probably make it through the Coastal Commission,” said Alan Uke, president of a group called the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum. Uke said he’s received positive responses to the project from six of the 12 commissioners he’s spoken with so far. “They all told me they were going to vote for it or they probably would vote for it,” he said. “None of them told me they were unlikely to vote for it or not voting for it. And the ones I haven’t talked to yet, according to my consultant, several of those will probably vote for it because of the type of people they are.” The Midway Museum, part of a large-scale waterfront development project, the North Embarcadero Alliance Visionary Plan, has been endorsed by the San Diego Unified Port District. The Port has been awaiting approval from the Coastal Commission to begin work on the Embarcadero project.
Over the holidays, the Coastal Commission’s San Diego staff released a report on the North Embarcadero plan that advised against commissioners’ approval of the Midway part of the project. It was the only part of the North Embarcadero plan to which the commission’s staff objected. The project was to go before coastal commissioners at a Jan. 10 meeting in Los Angeles. After the organization’s staff released the report advising against the Midway project, the Port District requested more time to respond to the staff’s comments. The project will go before the Coastal Commission at its March meeting, which will take place in San Diego. The commission meets in San Diego once every six months. The study had said the 190-foot-tall, 1,000-foot-long ship would obstruct views of the bay. The report also criticized plans for visitor parking on the Navy Pier, calling the pier “inappropriate” for a permanent parking lot. The report said the lot would have an “adverse visual impact” and that the land could be better used for public access and recreational purposes.
Diana Lilly, a coastal planner with the Coastal Commission, said additional information would be considered, and could change the staff’s recommendation if it solves some of the problems the study pointed out. Uke said that he didn’t expect the project to get Coastal Commission staff approval, but he knew that they would tell them what the issues were. “They’ve made their case now, and we’re going to come back around and make our case of things they don’t know about why they should do it,” he said. The group’s case will include information on additional views of San Diego the carrier will offer. What Uke plans to work on most in the upcoming weeks is the issue of parking. His organization needs to have a deal in the works that will make off-site parking available to the museum by the time the Navy stops parking on the pier in the next five to 10 years and the area is turned into a public park, Uke said. “We’re just starting into that right now,” he said. “The port told us that their property is basically committed, but there are other places that have excess parking or a project going in that could accommodate us.”
The parking, which will cost about $1.7 million for the 320 spaces needed, will actually turn out to be less expensive than maintaining the pier as a parking lot, he said. Uke’s group has raised about $1.5 million so far to get the project into the approval process, including commissioning various studies. If the Midway Museum is approved by the Coastal Commission, it will cost $5 million to set it up, including transporting the decommissioned carrier to San Diego from its current location in Bremerton, Wash., Uke said. Once established, the museum is expected to have an annual cash flow of $500,000 a year, he said. According to the Carrier Museum’s projections, the Midway could see about 400,000 visitors a year, but needs 300,000 to break even financially, Uke said.
Plans for the museum include housing the Hovis collection of more than 1,000 items of military memorabilia. According to Uke, the collection is the third largest of its kind. The collection, which is worth more than $1 million, has already been given to the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum and is being stored at a Navy base in the county.
