Wheels Museum Making Progress

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By Lloyd Jojola
Albuquerque Journal

Friday, October 12, 2001

The effort to build a world-class transportation museum in the old rail yards Downtown keeps chugging along.

A Saturday fund-raiser for the Wheels Museum hauled in about $55,000, said Leba Freed, president of the museum board of directors.

The museum is to be one piece of the planned redevelopment of the old Santa Fe Railway Repair Shop east of Barelas.

Last year, the nonprofit Urban Council closed a $2.5 million deal with the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad to purchase the site. The 27-acre area — including old buildings in size from a few hundred square feet to more than 150,000 square feet — is envisioned as the home to an exposition center. Museum officials say their work is quietly progressing.

"We're in the throes of the master planning of the site," Alan Clark, the museum's executive director said recently. In addition to working with a well-known San Diego-based urban planner, museum officials are waiting for a case statement from their Los Angeles-based museum planner, Clark said. The report will be a preliminary review of how to develop the museum, he said.

A potential 60,000- to 100,000-square-foot indoor area for the museum is being considered, and a range of outdoor exhibits are planned.

Museum officials have been talking with groups including the New Mexico Route 66 Association and the New Mexico Steam Locomotive and Railroad Historical Society about developing exhibits. A Pennsylvania railroad museum is sending old railroad photos.

"We would like to talk to people who have ideas or things that could be appropriate for the museum," Freed said.

The fund-raiser proceeds will help pay for museum overhead, which runs about $70,000 annually. The city, county and federal goverments have contributed funds for planning.

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, one-quarter of all payroll checks in Albuquerque came from railroad work, Clark said.

"These rail yards, the buildings, were important nationally," Clark said.

Revamping the site so it can host trade shows and exhibitions alongside restaurants, shops and a museum is viewed as a huge economic stimulus. "It's enormously important in the development of Albuquerque," Clark said.