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Museum moves out, moves on

After many unstable years, officials hope the Florida International Museum's move brings financial security.

By CARRIE JOHNSON
Published June 7, 2005

[Times photo: James Borchuck]

Radomir Knezevic, left, and Alan Dick, right, roll display cases to a loading dock to be put into storage at the Florida International Museum on Wednesday.

ST. PETERSBURG - The halls where china from the Titanic and Babe Ruth's bat were displayed are empty now except for a few cardboard boxes and wooden packing crates.

After 11 years in an abandoned department store, Florida International Museum has closed its doors to prepare for a move to an annex building next to its current quarters.

For Kathy Oathout, director of the museum since 2001, the last week has been filled with mixed emotions.

"The sad part of it is to walk through all of these rooms that you've walked through hundreds or thousands of times and know it's not going to be here any more," Oathout said.

For the past three years, museum officials lobbied to move out of the former Maas Brothers department store, a 300,000-square-foot behemoth at 100 Second St. N that they say costs $20,000 a month just to air-condition.

The city sank more than $7-million into the struggling museum, while private investors contributed tens of millions more. But attendance for recent shows such as "Baseball as America" and "Riches of the State Russian Museum" failed to match earlier blockbusters.

At least twice, the museum has teetered on the edge of insolvency before benefactors with deep pockets rescued it.

Now city and museum officials are crossing their fingers, hoping the move to a smaller building shared with St. Petersburg College will give the museum the jolt it needs to finally become financially secure.

"There's always been a lot of controversy around FIM," said council member Virginia Littrell. "But I really hope that at this point and time, they're finally in a situation where they're going to be okay."

* * *

Desperation fueled the creation of the museum.

Little was going well for St. Petersburg in the early '90s. There was a baseball stadium but no team. Bay Plaza, a proposed $200-million outdoor shopping center, fizzled. Maas Brothers Department Store had been empty for five years, a symbol of the city's deterioration.

City officials were anxious to find something to prove downtown could be a viable place for private investment. They turned to the city of Memphis, Tenn., which was enjoying enviable success with "Catherine the Great," an exhibition of items from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

When the exhibition's director, James Broughton, decided to leave Memphis in 1991 because the city denied him a pay raise, St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer began talking to him about bringing "Catherine the Great" to the city.

That plan fell apart, but a partnership was formed.

In 1992, nine business people joined together to create Florida Cultural Exhibitions Inc. Broughton was named executive director.

For more than a year, Broughton and Fischer labored to find a blockbuster that would bring recognition to St. Petersburg. They found their answer in "Treasures of the Czars," a collection of items from the reign of the Romanov czars, 1613 to 1917.

All they needed was a building. With the backing of John W. Galbraith and the St. Petersburg Times , the Maas Brothers building was renovated and transformed into Florida International Museum.

"Treasures of the Czars" was a major success.

"The lines stretched around the block," Fischer said. "It sold out every day. You couldn't get a ticket."

The show was written up in the travel section of national newspapers, including the New York Times and Chicago Tribune . Stores and restaurants sprang up near the museum almost overnight. An economic impact study said the "Czars" generated $34-million outside the museum.

In all, more than 600,000 people saw the exhibit.

* * *

Other shows were less successful. Attendance for "Splendors of Ancient Egypt" in 1996 was so disappointing the museum handed out coupons. An "Alexander the Great" exhibit also drew lackluster crowds.

But in 1997, the museum landed its biggest coup to date: a collection of items from the wreckage of the Titanic . In a stroke of fortuitous timing, the extremely popular movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet about the doomed ocean liner opened the same year.

More than 800,000 visited the museum.

Suddenly, there were people in downtown St. Petersburg on the weekends.

"It provided the spark," said Mayor Rick Baker, who became involved with the museum as Galbraith's lawyer and later served as chairman of the museum's board. "It really made people start to believe in downtown."

Other pieces began falling into place. The Renaissance Vinoy Resort, which stood empty from 1974 to 1992, was renovated. The city signed a Major League Baseball team. Luxury condominium towers such as the Cloisters and the Florencia soon followed. Mel Sembler, developer of BayWalk, said he never would have launched the popular shopping and entertainment complex if it hadn't been for the museum.

"Had the building which houses the museum returned to its former life as a vacant department store, we, as BayWalk developers, would not have considered investing millions of dollars across the street in a downtown retail and entertainment center," Sembler wrote to Gov. Jeb Bush in a fundraising letter for the museum in 2000.

* * *

But financial problems persisted. The city twice agreed to spend $3.9-million to buy the buildings and most of the land underneath in 1997, and bought the rest for $2.1-million in 1999.

By early 2003, the museum had less than $100,000 in the bank. Relief came in the form of a $1-million federal grant and another $1-million from Galbraith.

By then, museum officials already had suggested moving the facility to escape the enormous cost of maintaining the Maas Brothers building.

In August 2003, the City Council approved a deal to allow St. Petersburg College to pay $1-million for the annex building between Second and Third streets and First and Second avenues N. The college would then sublease space to Florida International.

To Oathout, it was a huge relief.

"As a museum, we were doing okay," she said. "Everything was on budget. The problem was the expense of keeping the building going. And the frustration of taking three years, after we came up with the concept, to get out of the building."

The move proved advantageous. In 2004, Progress Energy proposed buying the Maas Brothers site for its Pinellas County headquarters. A 28-story luxury hotel, the Grand Bohemian, is also being built.

Baker said the project will have a tremendous effect on downtown St. Petersburg. "It will equal the impact of BayWalk," he said at an unveiling last month.

Demolition of the former department store is set to begin this month.

* * *

Oathout and her staff will move to St. Petersburg College's downtown campus, 201 Fourth St. N, at least for the next few months. Most of the remnants from the museum's permanent collection, the Cuban Missile Crisis, have been sold to Gary Powers Jr. for his Cold War museum.

Leftover items, including movie posters and props, electronics, glass display cases and an entire early 60s kitchen, will be put up for auction at 10 a.m. on Wednesday at the museum.

It is scheduled to reopen Oct. 6 in its new location at 244 Second Ave. N. The first exhibition will be "The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes," a collection of photographs, memorabilia and music. Oathout, who became museum director after spending 25 years at the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, deflected questions about the museum's current financial situation, saying only the museum has enough money to move forward.

"I felt like I came to the museum at a very, very challenging time," Oathout said. "And the challenges weren't necessarily museum challenges. They were building challenges. This is going to be such a luxury position to just be there and focus on Florida International Museum."

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 02:15:48]