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A new place for its stuff

By JON WILSON
Published April 26, 2006

Clothes, furniture, dolls, "the legacy of a thousand years in St. Petersburg,'' said George Campbell, museum board member.

Currently, hundreds, perhaps thousands of items are stored in a room at St. Petersburg College's Downtown Center, a few blocks west of the museum, which is on the approach to the Pier.

SPC's expansion projects mean the storage room, situated under a ramp in what used to be the old Maas Brothers parking garage, eventually will no longer be available.

So the search is on.

About 3,000 to 4,000 square feet are needed, Campbell said.

Museum officials hope someone with a sound building, ideally with air conditioning to aid in preservation, will step forward. The museum doesn't have a big rental budget, but it does pay for the air conditioning at the current site, Campbell said.

He suggested another possibility: working with the city's several other museums to find storage space that all could share.

Campbell also said he has visited several times with city officials and continues to hope the city can help out. The artifacts, he pointed out, are publicly owned.

Finding room for them has been a recurrent problem for years.

"We just have so much stuff,'' Campbell said.

Meanwhile, SPC is working with the museum to solve the problem, officials said.

Storage space might be available elsewhere on another one of the college's several campuses, or perhaps temporarily on the fourth floor of SPC's downtown building. That floor is not yet being used.

"We want them to move out of there but we are offering them some options," said Susan Reiter, the college's director of facilities, planning and institutional services.

[Last modified April 26, 2006, 06:32:09]