Sunday, July 28, 2013

Financial hurdles loom for Nut Tree air museum projects: Vacaville, California

Plans remain underway for the new Jimmy Doolittle Air and Space Museum, a full-service hotel and a multiuse building on 22 acres near Nut Tree Airport, but a project spokesman said financial hurdles, specifically raising enough cash to buy a privately owned parcel, loom. 

 Brian McInerney, CEO of the museum's Education Foundation, said buying "the first piece of property," 10.5 acres owned by CT Realty Investors, "is the first priority."

The Southern California-based real estate investment and property management company wants $1.5 million for the parcel, formerly the site of a minor league baseball stadium. McInerney and the foundation retain an option to buy the land for that price until Dec. 31. In an interview Thursday, he gave no indication what would happen if the deadline came and went without its purchase.

Envisioned as a 22-acre complex between the airport and the Nut Tree shopping center, the plans call for leasing the remaining property, 11.5 acres, owned by the city of Vacaville.

"We're about one-third of the way there," that is, raising the money through a variety of donors, said McInerney, who has secured a supportive letter of intent for the project from the city of Vacaville.

Key elements in the letter cited the building of the air museum, currently housed at Travis Air Force Base, an air park, the hotel, and an education and restoration center. The letter gives the foundation the right to negotiate with the city and includes language about the creation of a mutually acceptable plan and wording about how the plan will unfold over a five-year period.

In previous interviews, city officials, among them City Manager Laura Kuhn and Mayor Steve Hardy, welcomed the project, which McInerney envisions as "a new economic focal point" for the city and Solano County, expanding the area's aviation heritage and history "to a national level."

Additionally, Solano Community College, which houses it aeronautics program in a building at the airport, may move its classrooms and facilities to the proposed site, if all goes as planned.

"We're very much planning to work with" the museum's educational foundation, said Jowel Laguerre, SCC superintendent-president. "It's definitely a good opportunity (for students)" to learn aircraft maintenance. "It's a win-win situation for the college and the community."

He also noted plans to build a multiuse building that would house up to 1,000 people for symposiums, lectures and conferences.

"The county doesn't really have a space for meetings that size," Laguerre said.

Former Vacaville Mayor Dave Fleming, a retired Air Force officer, said that the Nut Tree location for the museum was a "perfect" site and would "truly commemorate" the life of Jimmy Doolittle. A former Air Force general and an Alameda native, Doolittle, during World War II, received the Medal of Honor for leading a daring raid on Tokyo in 1942, an event depicted in the 1944 film "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," about the first American attack on Japan after Pearl Harbor.

McInerney said the museum's focus would be not only about Doolittle's legacy but also about education and patriotism.

"What does patriotism mean?" he asked. "Who was Jimmy Doolittle? He calculated risks and calculated chemistry for fuel, (helped to create) instruments for night flying. He was an innovator and risk-taker and became a patriot for doing the right things at the right time."

With the deadline on the property option approaching, McInerney sounded cautiously hopeful about raising the rest of the money needed for the private property purchase.

"Our general message is that we believe we have a pretty good vision and plan for Solano County," he said. "It's basically to develop a new economic focal point, based with aviation and education. The first stage is acquiring the land, and we could use anybody and everybody (in leadership positions) with help in closing that deal out."


The Jimmy Doolittle Museum Education Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. For more information, visit www.doolittlemuseum.org, or email info@doolittlemuseum.org.

Source:  http://www.thereporter.com