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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MAY 16, 1998

Growth and traffic at issue with museum site

By PAT FORGEY
Of the News-Register

A new home for Howard Hughes' legendary Spruce Goose is in the hands of McMinnville voters, who will decide Tuesday whether to annex 21.3 acres on Highway 18 for a musuem to house that plane and others.

Featuring the unwieldly name Captain Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Museum and Educational Center, the museum will be located across the highway from the headquarters of Evergreen International Airlines Inc. The site lies within the urban growth boundary, and borders the existing McMinnville city limits on the east, west and south.

In addition to the Spruce Goose, the musuem would house Evergreen founder Del Smith's collection of historic aircraft and an educational center aimed at teaching children about aviation.

Director Gary Thomspon can't imagine anyone voting against the museum. "It's essentially a gift to the community," he said.

Thompson said he hopes that the Experimental Aircraft Association, which already has a program called Young Eagles that runs a flight camp for kids, will use the center when it expands to the West Coast. "How can you say no to something like that?" he asked.

One person who can is Mark Davis of Friends of Yamhill County.

While the organization is opposing three other annexations on the May 19 ballot, it has taken no stand on the Evergreen annexation. Davis has; he's opposed.

"Admittedly, a museum is a special case," he said. "But are we obligated to take it?"

Davis said a musuem would be nice to have, but on the proposed site, would destroy farmland and increase sprawl. "If we want to protect the farmland like we claim we are trying to do, we cannot keep moving the cities out," he said.

While the site carries farm zoning, soil studies show it has extremely limited farm value, Thompson countered. "It's got so much clay in it you can't grow any crops," he said.

Davis also expressed concern about a musuem placing new demands on city services. "I see it as a rip-off of the taxpayers," he said.

Thompson said there would be no additional cost to taxpayers. He said the musuem would cover all of its own costs.

City planner Doug Montgomery concurred, saying the city is requiring Evergreen to pay the entire cost of extending water, sewer and storm drain lines to the site. "If there is a drain on city taxes, I'm not sure where it is," he said.

Davis also has some problems with Evergreen itself. "Evergreen has never been a player in the community," he said.

He has demonstrated against Evergreen's CIA connections and criticized Smith for not being more supportive of community activities over the years. "Just think of how H-P used to be," he said.

Davis' wife, Ellie Gunn, also has worked to scuttle the annexation.

She recently placed newspaper ads on behalf of a museum opponent and took advantage of a loophole in campaign disclosure laws to keep the opponent's identity secret. The mystery person has been described only as a woman who does not live in McMinnville.

Top architects competed to design the musuem. While some unconventional, dome-style structures were proposed, the eventual decision was to go with a traditional lodge-style A-frame, something better fitting the Yamhill River countryside.

The museum would feature the same wood as the Spruce Goose. And that's fir, not spruce, as the plane's fans know.

The other planes would be scattered around the expansive floor. Some would lie under the wings of the centerpiece plane.

An elevator going up to the observation deck would be built to resemble a control tower. It would simulate conditions at Sea-Tac and Portland International - the Northwest's two largest airports.

The quality of the plan was what won the Spruce Goose for Evergreen, said museum president Jack Real, who served on the board that decided to make McMinnville the Spruce Goose's permanent home.

Real, a former executive of Hughes Aircraft who lived for several years with Howard Hughes in the Bahamas, said Del Smith's pitch to use it as the centerpiece of an educational museum was what the board wanted to hear.

The museum also is intended to serve as a memorial to Smith's son, Michael, an Air Guard pilot and aviation history buff who was killed in a car accident. "It was his passion to build an air museum," Thompson said.

With Michael's death, "everything went flat," Thompson said, But plans are now back on track as a memorial.

"What a better way to remember this young man," he said.

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