The Williams Grand Canyon News today reported on the possible move to bring the warbird collection of Hans Lauridsen’s from current storage areas around the the Phoenix area to permanently relocating to Williams, AZ as the Lauridsen Aviation Museum — just off the I-40 at the gateway to the Grand Canyon.

Don’t take my word for it, read the full story at this link.

Lauridsen has had problems with the City of Glendale in his original plans to house the museum and collection there.  As a result, a good number of his planes are spread around the Phoenix area.

It frustrates me because I look at places here in the valley where you’d think the tourist attraction value of an aircraft museum would hold some water with the city fathers, but it seems like they are way too concerned about pooling resources to become the next Scottsdale. Take for evidence Mesa’s Falcon Field, Glendale, or even Phoenix-Gateway-Mesa-Williams-blah-blah airport… None of these places care about the historic aircraft, but will bend over backwards for the very light jet crowd (is there a “crowd” yet?)

I look at an airport like Chino, CA and get envious on how the city and county seem to embrace the history and heritage of it, the former Cal-Aero Field and current warbird haven. They support partnering and building enterprise around that very heritage, not pushing it away like we see here in PHX. With the history of Falcon Field, you’d think it’d be a natural for the city of Mesa, but they seem to care more about putting a waterpark in the city than anything else.

Regardless… and getting back to the article… I can’t help but wonder how much “potential” does a museum have up there? I mean, look at the Planes of Fame Grand Canyon facility just up the road in Valle, AZ… does it get much traffic at all? Enough to keep the doors open? Or does the main museum in Chino subsidize it to keep it for storage? Would a museum in Williams add or compete? It’s not like there’s a lot of population up around those parts (though I would say Williams has better chances due to it’s proximity to the I-40).

I’m hoping it all works out for him… it’s a shame that the collection has been spread eight ways to Cucamonga up until now… it would be nice to have it in one spot.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:37 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.