Rogers museum celebrates expansion

John Burroughs, Rogers Historical Museum director, speaks Thursday during a ceremony for an expansion for the museum. The Hailey Ford building, which formerly housed the Rogers Morning News, will house exhibits after the museum’s expansion.
John Burroughs, Rogers Historical Museum director, speaks Thursday during a ceremony for an expansion for the museum. The Hailey Ford building, which formerly housed the Rogers Morning News, will house exhibits after the museum’s expansion.

ROGERS -- About 135 people gathered in the parking lot of the former Rogers Morning News/Hailey Ford building Thursday to celebrate the start of another downtown project -- the Rogers Historical Museum expansion.

A capital campaign to raise $750,000 by July kicked off during a groundbreaking for the expansion. John Burroughs, museum director, said renovation of the Hailey Ford building could start next year.

The museum expansion is one of many downtown projects in the works or finished.

"From Lake Atalanta to the new farmers market and the Railyard Bike Park, downtown Rogers is booming," Karen Minkel, Walton Family Foundation Home Region Program director, said during the event.

The foundation awarded the museum expansion project $408,000 in September through the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program. The project also received another $1 million from the foundation for construction.

"The Rogers Historical Museum caught our attention when the city opted to turn this space into an adaptive reuse project in downtown," Minkel said. "A project intended to restore a historical mid-century building amid significant downtown revitalization efforts was irresistible."

The city purchased the Hailey Ford building at 313 S. Second St. in December from Northwest Arkansas Newspapers.

Burroughs said renovating the 1948 building will more than double the museum's space. The museum at 322 S. Second St. is about 5,600 square feet. The Hailey Ford building is about 14,278 square feet.

Plans are to renovate the building to what it looked like when it opened as a Ford dealership, Burroughs said. The building's curved walls and windows, now covered, are an architectural feature rare for the city. Initial surveys of the building have shown the original facade is under stucco walls.

"The historic fabric of this building fits the mission of the museum," Burroughs said.

Kathleen Dickerson, museum commission chairman, has been with the museum for 39 years. She started on the board a year after it opened. She said the museum was using rented space at the time.

"The collection was stored all over town in various places," Dickerson said. "If you believe in something strong enough you stay with and keep working, and that is what we did."

Mayor Greg Hines said the project is an example of how government is supposed to work.

"This is not the first private-public partnership in this city and hopefully this will not be the last," Hines said. "I believe this is the secret sauce."

The museum also received a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010 that requires the city raise another $1.5 million for the renovation, Burroughs said. Some of the money has already been raised.

A renovation of the former youth center at 300 W. Poplar St. also is underway as part of the museum's expansion. The building will house the museum's collection.

NW News on 04/08/2016

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