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National Inventors Hall of Fame will remain in operation, but will be resource for new school, undergo other changes
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, May 17, 2008
Area officials have adopted a sweeping agreement that dramatically will change the scope of the financially ailing museum at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The University of Akron, Akron Public Schools and the city of Akron's new Partnership for Invention and Creativity plans to turn the museum into a resource for the science, math and technology middle school that is being built next to and partially within the museum.
The city-owned facility, then called Inventure Place, opened to the public at a cost of $38 million in 1995 after years of delay and financial challenges. Attendance sputtered and the museum never made a profit, even though related business ventures have proved successful.
''This is the next evolution,'' said Bob Reffner, a member of the board of directors for the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, the umbrella organization for four wholly owned subsidiaries, including the museum. ''Times change, tastes change, things evolve.''
Akron is terminating the foundation's long-term lease in the building at 221 South Broadway and entering into a new lease with the schools at no
cost to the district, according to the memorandum of understanding signed in December by the city, school district, university and foundation.
While the National Inventors Hall of Fame will continue to operate in the building, it will have much less space and play a much more limited role in the museum's operations.
Changes planned
The hall of fame will convert the facility's 2,000-square-foot bookstore into an interactive exhibit that replicates one at a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Reffner said this exhibit will be managed by the hall of fame and open at no charge to the public.
The museum plaques honoring inventors from the 1700s to the present will be mothballed for now. Officials say these have not changed substantially over the last 13 years and are deemed too lackluster to attract repeat visitors.
Another 30,000 square feet of the facility will be converted into a resource center for 500 fifth- through eighth-graders who will be housed in the $16 million magnet school that will adjoin the hall of fame. Locked doors will seal the school from the rest of the facility most of the time.
The rest of the city-owned facility — about 20,000 square feet that had been a hands-on museum — will begin a new life under the control of the new partnership.
Officials in the partnership say they want to update and refresh the hands-on museum for the middle-school students and possibly for others on day trips from other districts. But these plans have yet to gel.
''We've had some very preliminary discussions about what we could do to breathe new life in this facility,'' said Mark Moore, assistant construction manager for the city of Akron. ''We're brainstorming what we could do.''
Maryann Wolowiec, the project manager for the new school, said the museum may be fine-tuned to help teach math or science concepts that aren't easy to relay in the classroom.
''We want it to be engaging and a place that would reach out to the region,'' she said. ''You can't just tinker with it. Many bright and talented people already have tried to make it as engaging as possible.''
The city, UA and the school district each will name four trustees and the hall of fame will name one- to two-year terms to develop the plans. This could lead to hiring someone to run the hands-on museum and raising money through grants and donations. Again, that's all up in the air.
Dwindling attendance
But running the museum in the black could be a tall order, if the past is any indication. From the very first day, the museum cost more to operate than it could generate in gate receipts.
Early predictions that the facility would turn a profit by 2000 — that was ''guaranteed,'' then hall of fame CEO Richard Nichols told the Beacon Journal in 1997 — did not come to pass.
While museum attendance was 275,000 in its first year of Inventure Place's operations, it dropped to 125,000 in the second year and kept falling.
The number of visitors has flat-lined to about 50,000 a year for the last several years, said Rini Paiva, executive director of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the subsidiary that honors inventors.
Along the way, the museum cut back hours to be more cost-effective, reduced afternoon rates to be more appealing to children, borrowed money from the city and announced various plans to get out of the red.
In 2006 alone, the subsidiary that managed the museum — the Center for Creativity and Invention — lost $465,500, according to its IRS 990 tax form. In 2007, it lost $431,000, Paiva said.
The loss would have been even greater if the city had not agreed in July 2005 to forgo rent through Dec. 31, 2008. That saved the museum $14,000 a month, or more than $500,000 over the 42-month period.
On the upside
At the same time, there have been some bright spots.
The museum's parent organization, the National Hall of Fame Foundation, turned a profit of about $1 million in 2006, thanks to two subsidiaries, Invent Now and Invent Kids Now, both of which oversee educational programming.
Fully two-thirds of the foundation's 2007 receipts came from Camp Invention and Club Invention, both of which are part of Invent Now Kids, according to its annual report.
And the foundation's yearly inductions of inventors into its hall of fame will continue, although the 2009 ceremony may be in the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in Arlington, Va., Reffner said.
For now, the next task will be to uproot the 25 staffers who work at the hall of fame and move them to an as-yet undecided location next month. About 20 other staffers housed in an office on White Pond Drive will remain there.
Reffner said foundation officials don't feel they are losing anything under the new arrangement.
''Our feeling now is that our focus should be getting the math and science academy right, and the rest will follow,'' he said. ''I think the entire community is sober-minded in what it's going to take to build and sustain any interactive facility.''
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.
Area officials have adopted a sweeping agreement that dramatically will change the scope of the financially ailing museum at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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