Museum raising money for permanent home
A fundraising campaign is underway to help a museum that pays homage to a Dayton musical legacy find a new home.
Funk Music Hall of Fame and Exhibition Center officials have launched a GoFundMe page.
“Our goal for this campaign is to raise the $50,000 match required to leverage a $100,000 state grant for capital improvements,” the appeal says. “That means every dollar you donate leverages $2 more. That’s a great return on your charitable investment. No gift is too large or too small.”
Last week, officials announced that the center would have to leave its home at 113 E. Third St. in downtown Dayton’s Fire Blocks District by the end of the month due to leasing costs.
The long-anticipated Funk Center opened at the East Third Street location in December 2017 and celebrated its grand opening early in 2018.
It has brought in about 6,000 funk fans from as far away as England, Japan and Germany.
Numerous musicians including members of the Steve Miller Band and George Thorogood and The Destroyers have visited the museum.
Funk legend George Clinton was there in July before a show at Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway with Parliament Funkadelic.
The museum began using the Third Street space free of charge under the Ellway Group, the Fire Blocks district’s first developer.
Funk Center CEO and founder David Webb said the volunteer-led organization could not afford to pay the $1,400 a month the new Fire Blocks developer Windsor Companies is requiring.
The funk music genre put Dayton on the map as the Land of the Funk in the 1970s and ’80s, thanks to a stable of groups that included the Ohio Players, Steve Arrington’s Hall of Fame, Zapp, Faze-O, Heatwave, Sun, Slave and Lakeside.