One of the major issues with purchasing a building built in the early 1980's is bringing it back to life; that life that comes from renovations and bringing the building up to code, One of the major renovations needed for the building is a "new" special roof. Currently, when there is a heavy rain, the curator will make a visual inspection of the floors and displays to see if there are any new leaks. The museum has paid for numerous patches, but patchs are not the solution.
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Although the museum was approved for a $500K state grant, it required that the museum spend $250K on new renovations and submit them for reimbursement. Unfortunately, the museum was unable to meet the $250K spending requirement. If you visit the museum you can see we have made major upgrades but according to the state, almost all of what we've done was considered "repairs" and not new work. The state's rules also meant that anything that did qualify as new work, had to be done at prevailing wage increasing the cost of the project by about 20%. So, the state grant was of no benefit to the museum and we've continued moving forward with local grants and fundraising as best we can.
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We had hoped that renovating the roof would be considered new renovations, and it was, but we didn't have $150K to put out up front. So what that means is we're still working to get the roof recovered. The process is described below.
