The Mayor says the consultant’s estimate of 100,000 visitors a year, “would have been impossible.” Would the Mayor pour four or five million dollars into a tourist spot more than 20 miles south of Socorro? “I would not unless maybe it was Disneyland,” Mayor Bhasker said. “They built (the museum) in the wrong place,” Socorro Mayor Bhasker says. The main thing is, it’s in the middle of nowhere,” the former Socorro County State Representative said. It’s very interesting, the exhibits and things. “It was fairly bizarre that they would place it where it was because there was no way you could really justify that location in my mind,” Former Speaker of the House State Rep. “I think the obituary was written many, many years ago on that one,” former State Senator John Arthur Smith said. The remote location meant few visitors, meager income, deficient utilities, inadequate staffing, and expensive maintenance. Over the course of a decade, the museum never drew more than 7800 tourists a year. Even though there are no gas stations, hotels or restaurants nearby, the consultants estimated it would draw on average, 106,000 visitors a year, boost the economy by some $10,066,200 and create 174 jobs. Albuquerque consulting firm Architectural Research Consultants, Inc., hired by the state, said the best place for the museum would be a spot 25 miles south of Socorro, four and a half miles off I-25. So what went wrong? Location, location, location. How will historians view this project? “They’re going to shake their head and (call this) another example of government waste,” says the former State Senate Finance Chair, John Arthur Smith. There was a real failure in this particular project,” says former long-time State Senator John Arthur Smith. All there is to show for millions of tax dollars is an award-winning building sitting abandoned on New Mexico’s central prairie. Today the parking lot is deserted, tourists are gone, artifacts packed away, display cases vacant, exhibits dismantled, interpretive panels removed and the gift shop bare. In November 2016, the Cultural Affairs Department padlocked the doors and permanently closed the museum. Where the El Camino Real was in use for three centuries, the trail’s namesake museum lasted just eleven years. It was exciting,” Mayor Bhasker said.īut the excitement was short-lived. “We had (Governor) Bill Richardson out there cutting the ribbon and then we had the vice president of Spain come down here with his beautiful wife and we had dignitaries everywhere. Socorro Mayor Ravi Bhasker attended the dedication. An estimated crowd of 2000 turned out for the dedication ceremony. The Bureau of Land Management chipped in another $4,000,000 and by 2005 the state’s newest museum became a reality. No one remembers exactly where the idea came from but the first reference to an El Camino Real Museum was buried in an obscure 1999 State Senate Floor Amendment: $1,000,000 to plan, design, construct and equip the El Camino Real facility in Socorro County.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |