October’s meeting of the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau’s board could either revive a long delayed project to turn the Elks Lodge into a children’s museum or call the whole thing off.
During its Fiscal Year 2024 budget meeting Tuesday, CEO Nancy Carpenter told the board the CVB received a $20,000 grant from Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area to start restoration work at the property. The only catch? The board would need to put up a $20,000 match before it can use the money.
The board voted to table whether to add the money to its FY 2024 budget, and Carpenter agreed to present more information to the board regarding a new timeline for the project, associated costs and fundraising efforts.
“We still think it would be a lovely thing for Columbus to have a children’s museum,” Carpenter said.
CVB took out a $450,000 loan to purchase the Main Street property in 2015 with hopes of converting it into a children’s museum. A year later, Carpenter estimated the museum project would cost between $3.5 million and $5 million. The building restoration alone would make up $700,000 of that.
Since then, it has spent another $94,000 on design work, consulting fees and fundraising, Carpenter told The Dispatch on Thursday.
But the project has been sidelined since 2018, when the legislature failed to renew a local 2% sales tax on prepared food and beverages that largely funded the CVB. That tax was renewed a year later, but the COVID-19 pandemic quickly followed.
“The project was pushed back to the side for several years,” she said. “When we lost our funding, we had $700,000 in reserves and that’s how we survived. And then we had to get through COVID and move forward.”
Board President Liz Terry said Carpenter’s October report will be vital before the board decides what to do with the building.
“We are going to need more information from Nancy about the building and its needs before we make any kind of decision on how to move forward,” Terry said. “(Selling it) is definitely one of our options.”
According to Lowndes County tax records, the property is appraised at $146,100.
Project history
Carpenter told The Dispatch prepping for the project in 2016 to restore and renovate the museum’s first floor into three main rooms for exhibits. The top floor would have a catering kitchen and a ballroom that could be used for events independent of the children’s museum.
Needed renovations also include a new HVAC unit, electrical systems and a new elevator, among other things, to bring the building back up to code, she said.
Dale Partners of Jackson served as a consultant early on, while Ohio-based Roto Group designed the project. CVB paid $18,500 to Projects Consulting Inc. president Holly Wagner to raise funds for construction, but Carpenter could not provide The Dispatch specifics on the fruits of those efforts by press time.
Carpenter said now that the project could pick back up where it left off in 2018, she hopes the board will vote to approve matching the funds, which could be used to start repairs on the building.
“That building definitely needs some work,” she said. “But the board needs to decide on whether we will move forward with the project first.”
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