Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Museum targeting summer opening
FORT SMITH — The U.S. Marshals Museum reported making serious headway in 2022 as it prepares to open this year after more than a decade of development.
Ben Johnson, the museum’s president and chief executive officer, and Doug Babb, chairman of the museum’s board, provided an update on the project during the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce’s First Friday Breakfast last week. They also gave insight into what people can expect to see when it finally opens, which they expect to happen this summer.
Johnson, the event’s keynote speaker, said it’s both very rare and a sizable development for a community that isn’t a major, coastal economic hub to be chosen as the home of a major national and international museum. He said he expects the Marshals Museum to have a significant impact in terms of economic, social, cultural and educational value.
Babb described the progress on the project in 2022 as “nothing less than extraordinary.” He said Little Rockbased CDI Contractors has erected walls for the galleries and completed other work, such as installing lights and an electrical system. This process began in October.
“The entry to the museum was cut just yesterday, so they will be done in a couple of weeks,” Babb said.
Babb said Thinkwell, a Los Angeles company, has been coordinating with about 60 or 70 vendors across the United States and Canada to design and build the museum’s exhibits. The museum signed a $7.8 million contract with Thinkwell in November 2021.
“There are over 41 interactive experiences that will be installed,” Babb said, adding that work will be done over the next few months.
More than $46 million has been raised since Fort Smith was announced as the museum site in January 2007, Babb said. The Marshals Museum Foundation has about $2 million-$3 million left to raise to finish its approximately $50 million capital campaign, which will be used for the exhibit space and create the exhibits, along with other things such as furniture, fixtures and equipment.
Babb has said the price of the exhibits went up as a result of inflation and supply chain issues, among other factors, that came after the museum signed the Thinkwell contract. The company will also prepare the shipping of the finished exhibits to Fort Smith and their installation.
“We are in the process of meeting with a large number of current and potential donors over the months of January and February, and we’ll be making requests for additional contributions,” Babb said. “And we’re currently cultivating some new donors in the state of Arkansas who’ve never given before.”
Johnson, who started his position in August, disclosed details on the museum’s exhibit experience, which will include dedicated galleries such as To Be a Marshal, Frontier Marshals, the Campfire, a Changing Nation and Modern Marshals.
“This is not just an old west museum with old pictures hanging on the wall,” Johnson said.
“This is 18,000, 20,000 square feet of interactive, immersive information about, yes, the United States Marshals Service, but the Constitution in the United States, the way that our government was formed, how it is theoretically supposed to work, the role of the marshals and a variety of other things all the way from 1789 to the current day.”
Johnson also reiterated data the museum had previously presented to the community.
The museum expects annual attendance of 125,576 people during a typical year based on data provided by Leisure Development Partners, a consulting practice headquartered in London, via a feasibility study in 2018. The first couple of years after opening are expected to over-perform in comparison.
In addition, the Arkansas Economic Development Institute used the information provided in the feasibility study to estimate the museum and related tourist expenditures will have a total annual impact of $13 million to $22 million on Sebastian County. It’s also projected to result in an additional 286 full-time-equivalent jobs in the county.
Latisha Settlage, dean of the College of Business and Industry at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, asked Johnson how much time the museum believes people will spend at the museum and how often it plans to update its exhibits to inspire returning visits.
Johnson estimated people would visit for one to two hours depending on how much they interact with the five permanent galleries. The museum will also have another 4,000-square-foot gallery that can facilitate temporary, rotating exhibits a couple of times per year to give people a reason to come back.
Johnson estimated the museum will begin refreshing or improving its permanent exhibits after four or five years.
Fort Smith voters rejected a proposal in March 2019 to levy a nine-month, 1% sales tax to pay for the museum’s completion. Construction of the main museum building, which consists of about 53,000 square feet at 789 Riverfront Drive along the Arkansas River, was completed in January 2020.