With some of Bethlehem's most influential leaders at his side and Bethlehem Steel's majestic blast furnaces as a backdrop, National Museum of Industrial History Chief Executive Officer Stephen Donches on Monday announced the museum's groundbreaking.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's not the first time museum officials have thrown a shindig to celebrate the museum's proposed groundbreaking.
In January 2000, they called a similar ceremony on the site, and 11 months later the Liberty High School band played as a huge front-end loader carried the head of Bethlehem Steel and the mayor above a museum preview center slated to open by late 2001.
After four years and several false starts in which a down economy and the demise of Bethlehem Steel kept a single brick from being laid, museum officials on Monday said this time things will be different.
This time, they're fresh off a year in which $1.5 million was raised, and this time they're putting those donations into construction rather than planning.
Most important, the start of work releases more than $1 million in donations tied to construction, and beats a March 31 deadline set by Bethlehem Steel when it donated the building to the nonprofit National Museum of Industrial History three years ago.
If construction hadn't begun before the deadline, the museum board would have risked losing the building.
In fact, Donches is so confident the museum is coming that he's making arrangements with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission for public tours of the property, even as construction continues.
''For all of those donors who told us, 'Come back to us when you start construction,' well, this is it,'' Donches said. ''This is truly the start of construction.''
Or at least the start of a $500,000 project to put a roof on the former Bethlehem Steel electrical repair shop, the projected home of the national museum.
Donches said the museum board is focusing its attention on completing the $17 million project to prepare the 39,000-square-foot building for more than 100 exhibit pieces provided by the Smithsonian Institution.
The roof will take five months to complete, and if another $1 million can be raised by then, a second phase will begin to replace windows and renovate the exterior, said former Bethlehem Steel Chief Executive Officer Hank Barnette, who chairs the museum board.
After that, if at least $3 million more is raised, the interior of the two-story museum will be completed, releasing a $4.5 million state grant pledged by former Gov. Tom Ridge in 1999. But Donches said how long that will take depends on how long it takes to get more donations.
Museum officials will no longer discuss former plans for a $250 million museum in the giant No. 2 Machine Shop, Donches said.
Instead, the building originally slated to be a preview center to the larger museum is now the museum, and it could be expanded into other former Steel buildings, including the No. 2 Machine Shop, as more money is raised, Donches said.
It's a scaled-back but perhaps more realistic plan from the one first laid out by Bethlehem Steel in 1997, when it envisioned the museum as the centerpiece of a $450 million cultural, shopping and entertainment district on 160 acres of former Steel land in south Bethlehem.
''While a vision was established almost eight years ago for the property, time and the community have changed,'' said Mayor John Callahan. ''I have no doubt that we will be involved in creating a plan for development that will both define our community's future while celebrating and preserving its past.''
Part of that change in vision — and reason for new hope — is the arrival of BethWorks Now, the deep-pocketed New York development group that bought the property last year.
BethWorks Now has joined Las Vegas Sands, which operates the Venetian casino in the Nevada city, to apply for one of two slot-machine licenses up for grabs in the state. The massive revenues from slots, estimated at $240 million for a parlor built in south Bethlehem, bring new optimism that the blast furnaces, No. 2 Machine Shop and many other former Steel buildings can be saved.
Mike Perrucci, a Phillipsburg attorney and principal of BethWorks Now, announced last month that the museum project would be a key part of an $879 million slot parlor development that would include a hotel, a cinema, shops, restaurants and as many as 1,200 apartments.
''We are going to do everything possible to bring a renaissance to this site,'' Perrucci said, ''to bring it alive as a vibrant part of this community.''
It remains unclear how long it will be before the museum opens, and Donches was loath to set another date he'd be at risk of missing.
But Harold Closter, director of Smithsonian Institution affiliations, said whenever it opens, it will be well worth the wait.
''This community has an exciting and extraordinary story to tell, and what an opportunity it is to tell this story on a real site where real history was made,'' Closter said. ''This chance will never come again. Let us make the most of it, while we can.''
