The dinosaur museum that needs a bailout 15 months after opening
TROUBLE FOR $ 34M FACILITY IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
Alberta’s $ 34- million Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum opened with lineups, a motorcycle ride led by Dan Aykroyd and a gala featuring blues singer Colin James. During the months since, it seems to have received almost every award and citation that could be thrown at it.
But having been constructed next to a renowned paleontological site, it’s also in a remote, cold- battered corner of northern Alberta nearly five hours northwest of Edmonton. And it’s in the only province in Canada that already has a dedicated dinosaur museum.
Now, slightly more than a year after its September 2015 opening, the museum is relying on county bailouts just to keep the lights on. Last week, the County of Grande Prairie approved $300,000 to pull the museum out of a year-end deficit.
Tim Powell, chairman of the museum’s board of directors, told the National Post it was because of “a combination of first- year growing pains.”
A fundraising gala that cost $ 132,000 brought in only $ 139,000. A raffle that cost $ 61,000 yielded only $86,000. Meanwhile, almost all levels of government have backed away from kicking in stable operational funding.
“We have approached the government both federal and provincial for funding but to date haven’t had success,” Powell wrote in an email.
The museum, which is named for the famed Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie, had its construction funded by $ 19.39 million from the County of Grande Prairie and $ 10 million from the provincial government, with private donors and local municipalities covering the remaining $2.6 million.
But now, the museum is effectively functioning on a skeleton crew, having let go its dedicated marketing and fundraising personnel.
Last month, the board of directors also cut short the contract of director George Jacob, an internationally known museum planner brought to the area in 2014 to shepherd the museum’s launch.
Now, the facility is in the hands of Powell’s daughter, Caitlin, an accounting graduate from Edmonton’s MacEwan University. Media reports noted that she will have her CPA by late 2017.
The Philip J. Currie Museum was not blessed with an ideal location. It’s down the road from Grande Prairie and alongside a main route to Alaska and the Yukon, but otherwise it’s far removed from Alberta’s major population and tourist centres.
Building the museum far in Alberta’s north was so it would be next to Pipestone Creek, the world’s densest dinosaur bone bed.
However, whatever geographic qualms existed for the Philip J. Currie were met with a huge marketing budget and hefty attention to state-of-the-art exhibits.
For t he first year, it worke d . The museum earned nine museum and design awards and earned scores of press mentions, including a ranking in CondéNast Traveller as one of the world’s top museum openings.
It also s aw 1 2 0, 000 visitors; more than double the 60,000 expected.
But now, marketing efforts are effectively on hold, with museum managers aghast at the $ 56,000 in travel and conference expenses that were racked up in the first six months of 2016. “Our travel/ conference expenses got a little high on us,” Powell told the National Post.
Powell also told the CBC that they were now banking on a more-local strategy.
“I’ ve talked to a lot of people in town and they haven’t been yet ... we’d like to make them more aware,” Powell said, referring to Grande Prairie and the museum’s immediate 1,400-person neighbour of Wembley, Alta.
There is no known funding path to expansion plans, including a plan for an Imax theatre. While research is ongoing at the museum’s onsite lab, managers also have no clear sources of funding for the digging and research that will be needed to stock the exhibits with new finds.
Remote research- centric museums such as the Philip J. Currie are virtually impossible to keep afloat with only ticket sales.
Nevertheless, nobody appears to have seen this coming. With the museum conceived at the height of Alberta’s oil boom, little consideration was given to funding it beyond opening day. Economic impact studies were prepared for local governments, but no detailed business plans or feasibility studies.
The only stable operational funding is $300,000 a year from the County of Grande Prairie, which has slashed its contribution from earlier years. In 2014, the year before opening, the contribution was $585,000.
With an estimated 2017 budget of $ 1.8 million, this means the museum will have to find $ 1.5 million from fundraising and ticket and concession sales. But even in its explosively successful first year, the museum saw only $530,000 in ticket sales.
Powell said they’ve been meeting with counties and municipalities to get funding boosted, but all have responded that they’re trying to keep “taxes low.”
“We will meet with them again in the spring,” he said.
Alberta is no stranger to tourist facilities built in remote locations. A prime example would be the Philip J. Currie Museum’s larger, Queen- endorsed cousin, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. The Tyrrell’s 450,000 annual visitors dwarf the local Drumheller population of 8,000.
But t hat f acility, l i ke others, is bankrolled by the Alberta Ministry of Culture. In May, the Tyrrell announced a $ 9.3- million expansion.
Reportedly, early meetings for the Philip J. Currie included the frequent joke that it wouldn’t matter if the project became insolvent, because the museum would simply be rescued by the province. And indeed, getting provincial backing does now seem to be the plan.
Leanne Beaupre is a County of Grande Prairie reeve who has worked closely with the museum since its inception. In the new year, she said she will be working with the Philip J. Currie to secure a more reliable source of provincial funding.
“This is a provincial asset as well,” she said.