I thought some of you might be interested in this wonderful news! Bell County Museum meets grant goal By Andrew Keese Killeen Daily Herald BELTON — The Bell County Museum successfully completed a six-month fund-raising effort to expand the facility, museum officials said Tuesday. The fund-raising committee raised $1.01 million, mostly from local sources, Museum Director Stephanie Turnham said during a news conference Tuesday on the upper floor of the former Carnegie library. The project will link the Main Street museum and its historic Carnegie building structure, completed in 1905, to the facility next door, a former automotive dealership dating back to the 1930s. "We are very excited," Turnham said. "We are ready to get started." Groundbreaking is expected to take place early next year, and the facility will completed before the end of 2004. When the fund-raising committee formally kicked off its effort in May, there was some doubt as to whether it could be successful, Turnham said. She attributed the doubts to the state of the economy and the mobilization of Fort Hood troops to Iraq, but for whatever reason, she said, residents recognized the importance of the museum to the county. A challenge grant from the Frank and Sue Mayborn Foundation helped get the fund-raising process — headed up by retired Gen. Bob Shoemaker — started, she said. "It is a glorious day for Bell County," Shoemaker said during the news conference. "We cannot tell you how pleased we are to accomplish our goal and how grateful we are to all who contributed to our success." Bell County Commissioner Tim Brown said the next step will be to finalize design plans by architect Tanya Mikeska of Architectural Edge in Temple. That should be finished by the end of the year, before the county seeks bids from builders. "I really have got to stress how gratifying it is that the public stepped up and funded this thing," Brown said. Actual construction costs to link the two buildings will be an estimated $680,000, but other costs will come into play, including a competition to build a bronze statue to be placed in front of the museum in honor of the Chisholm Trail. The county, which pays the museum's employees and provides oversight of the facility, bought the building next to the museum from the city of Belton in March 2001. The so-called Guffy building was a Chevrolet dealership in the 1930s, and later a gas station and a machine shop. The county also financed what Brown calls "seed money" for a museum expansion into that building. That included cleaning up the Guffy building, removing its underground gas tanks and hiring an architectural firm to help with the expansion plans. The current plans, which have received a preliminary OK from the Texas Historical Commission, are to renovate the Guffy building and provide a linking glass and steel corridor with the Carnegie building. The corridor would serve as a central entry area and include elevators. The Carnegie building would continue housing the permanent display, but its upstairs auditorium would be renovated and used as a lecture area, instead of a space for temporary exhibits and a variety of other functions. The addition of the Guffy building would add 9,397 square feet of space. It is intended to have a large space for temporary exhibits, a resource library, storage space, a curator's workroom and a much-expanded bookstore. The area where the Guffy building's carport is located would be closed in with glass, and the museum would use that area to put a log cabin from Little River dating to the 1860s and 1870s. The display would be lighted so passersby on Main Street could see the structure any time of the day. Brown said the expansion plans won't compromise the historic integrity of the Carnegie building or the Guffy structure. The central corridor will be attached only where the current fire escape stairs are, he said. Those stairs were added much later and are not historic, he said. W.A. Buck Prewitt III, co-chairman of the fund-raising committee, said that the community will be proud of the museum's expansion in downtown Belton. "People who really deserve a 'Thank you' are those who said 'Yes,'" he said. "We do thank everybody." Contact Andrew Keese at [email protected]