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Save Our Steel in the News
Team with clout to help museum
Heavy hitters brought in to raise $2 million to start work on
Bethlehem project.
By Matt Assad
Of The Morning Call
April 14, 2004
After four years of
sparse donations and no construction, National Museum of Industrial History officials
Tuesday introduced a team of heavy hitters they believe will raise the $2 million needed to
begin building in south Bethlehem this summer.
Whether the capital campaign is the final phase of getting the $16 million Exposition Hall
built, or just another in a series of broken promises, should be known by July 1.
That's when the 30-member leadership council expects
to have the $2 million it needs to begin construction on the 37,000-square-foot museum on
former Bethlehem Steel land.
After construction begins, they expect to raise the
remaining $3 million needed to finish the project, which already has gotten pledges and
other donations totaling $11 million.
''I see this not as a kickoff, but as the fourth quarter,'' said C. Richard Wilson, a former
president of the Buckeye Partners pipeline company who heads the leadership council. ''We
have a building, we have a collection and we have two-thirds of the money we need.''
And now a team consisting of some of the Lehigh Valley's wealthiest people is being asked to
raise $5 million to build Exposition Hall, the first phase of what was envisioned as a $250
million national museum complex.
Two dozen board directors and leadership council members, including construction company
owner Lee Butz, Republican Party leader Charles Snelling and Moravian College President
Ervin J. Rokke, gathered Tuesday in the basement beneath the Martin Tower complex to launch
a $5 million capital campaign designed to have Exposition Hall open by the summer of 2005.
Other leadership council members include philanthropist Linny Fowler, St. Luke's Hospital
President Richard Anderson, Lehigh Valley Hospital President Elliot J. Sussman and developer
J.B. Reilly.
Over the next three months, council members will approach more than 200 potential donors
from across the region. Council members will be expected to pledge undisclosed amounts based
on their capacity to give.
At the same time, the Fogelsville consulting firm of Farr Healy will launch a Lehigh
Valley-wide campaign to sell museum memberships to the public.
While the leadership council and Farr Healy cover the local bases, capital campaign
fund-raisers Arthur Taylor, the former president of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, and his
wife, Kathryn, will scan the national landscape for large donations.
''Let's be honest, this project stalled for almost four years,'' said Kathryn Taylor. ''Our
task is to convince everyone that this museum is not dead. Our task is to get the community
involved again.''
The latest campaign comes after four years in which the museum project — and Bethlehem Works
— turned from euphoric hopes for a national museum commemorating the industrial revolution
into a dream suffocating under the weight of a struggling economy and a bankrupt steel
company.
Donations dwindled so much that organizers no longer talk about the massive $250 million
museum. Now they are focusing all of their attention on building what was once billed as a
preview center but now is called Exposition Hall.
Since 1999, the museum's available cash dipped from $1.9 million to $700,000, according to
the private nonprofit organization's tax returns.
The $11 million already raised for Exposition Hall consists primarily of $3.3 million the
museum already has spent and money it hopes to get, including pledges that won't be
delivered until construction begins and a $4.5 million state grant that won't be released
until the museum raises local donations equal to the grant.
But museum Executive Director Stephen Donches said the economy is on an upswing,
International Steel Group's purchase of bankrupt Bethlehem Steel is finally complete, and
the newly appointed leadership council has brought muscle to fund-raising efforts.
Exposition Hall is to be built at a former Bethlehem Steel electrical repair shop. ISG
legally could have taken over the shop on March 31 if construction had not begun, but the
Cleveland steelmaker has given the museum a one-year extension.
The Delaware Valley Real Estate Investment Fund's announcement last week that it will not
buy the remaining 120 acres of undeveloped Bethlehem Works land opens possibilities that a
more aggressive developer will step in.
Mayor John Callahan announced he was appointing a committee to rethink the city's vision for
Bethlehem Works, a proposed retail, entertainment and residential district. However that
vision is reshaped, there will be room to remember the industries that built and defended
America, he said.
''We have to adjust our vision, our plan, just as has had to adjust its vision and plan,'' Callahan said.
Tuesday's event gave a glimpse of what people will see if the leadership council reaches its
goal. The centerpiece of Exposition Hall is to be more than 100 pieces from the 1876
Centennial Exposition on loan from the Smithsonian Institution — early industrial machines
such as lathes, windmills, drill presses, a steam locomotive and the first Otis Elevator.
Other donated pieces include looms and weaving machines donated by Scalamandre, the luxury
textile manufacturer from New York.
''If we don't do this, we are making a terrible, terrible mistake,'' Snelling said. ''We
must succeed.''
Copyright © 2004,
The Morning Call
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