“What we will create downtown is an art district, with the museum anchoring one end of the street, the RiverQuarium anchoring the other end, and sandwiched in between the Imagination Theater and the Riverfront Resource Center,” Downtown Manager Don Buie said Friday. “It’s a full day’s entertainment.”
Buie met with AMA’s Board of Trustees this week, and the Albany-Dougherty Inner-City Authority, owner of the barn, is agreeing to allow AMA out of the lease, he said. Buie also serves as ADICA executive director.
Last December, the museum requested a six-month extension to complete a “due diligence” study of the historic barn’s capacity to be converted into a museum, according to previous reports.
“I had questioned whether it was financially feasible to convert a mule barn into a museum,” Buie said.
As soon as ADICA’s board votes on it, a new study, of approximately four months, will get under way to determine the potential design and costs of building the museum at the proposed site, he said.
“We think that this will be a fantastic opportunity,” Buie said. “It allows a developer to make better use of the (barn) property, and at the same time, the museum, you could build a museum cheaper and certainly much grander than to create a mule barn into a museum.”
Two developers are interested in the West Broad Avenue barn, one for a restaurant and another for a collaborative farmers’ market, he said.
Steve Hinton, president of the museum’s board of trustees, could not be reached for comment Friday, but museum Director Rives Sexton said the museum would be “exploring all available options” for a downtown move.
The board has been in talks for years about relocating the museum from its current location on Meadowlark Drive beside Darton College to downtown Albany.
Herald Publisher Mike Gebhart said the newspaper parking lot was available for sale to ADICA at a fair market price.
“For the sake of downtown development, I would be open to discussions about selling the property,” Gebhart said. “I’m committed to moving forward with downtown revitalization.”
He added that Herald employees’ continuing to have safe, convenient parking would be a priority.
The museum’s design for the 200,000-square-foot lot would include parking spaces, Buie said.
