The
Advertiser, Wednesday, April 4, 2007
City assures Longhorn Museum opening with $401,000 pledge
The League City Butler Museum will open next summer 2008,
thanks to City Council's spending an additional $401,000 to
complete the project.
The city purchased the former home of League City banker
Walter Hall for $595,000 in 2002. It will be a showcase for
Butler longhorns, one of seven longhorn bloodlines bred by
League City rancher Milby Butler in the early 1920s.
The museum will display the city's history, the
contributions of its early settlers as well as Galveston
County's history of farming and ranching.
Friends of the Butler Longhorn Museum, a nonprofit
organization, will operate the facility.
City Council members Mike Barber, Thomas Cones, Jon Keeney
and Phyllis Sanborn supported the funding, which was
opposed by City Councilmen Tad Nelson and Chris Samuelson,
City Councilman Jim Nelson was absent from the meeting.
The interior and exterior work will be done by Steve
Harding Design Inc., Graham B. Luhn, FAIA, Architects and
The Spigener Corp. It is expected to take 120 days, meaning
the construction should be finished by the end of this
summer.
Excluding the new funding, the city has already spent $1.5
million to purchase and refurbish the three-story, 8,000
squarefoot museum, which is located at 1220 Coryell.
It was supposed to open in February 2004.
The
Advertiser
Butler
museum wins approval
By DAVID YATES Citizen Staff
After almost six years of workshops and seemingly endless
discourse between city officials, League City Council
steered the building of the Butler Longhorn Museum toward
completion.
Nonetheless, Council must round up some funding before city
staff has a clear trail to blaze. On a 4 to 2 vote, with
Councilmen Tad Nelson and Chris Samuelson opposed, Council
authorized staff to prepare a request for qualification for
a design-build contract for the museum project.
A design-build contract is a process whereby a single
contractor is selected to prepare design development
drawings, construction documents and perform the completion
of necessary construction tasks.
"(The vote) was long overdue," said Councilman Tommy Cones,
who has championed the project since its conception. "We
need to move forward. The Butler Longhorn Museum will be a
success." Following the vote, Museum Curator Jennifer
Wycoff and Historical Director Alecya Galloway handed out
free museum T-shirts to Nelson and Samuelson to show there
were no hard feelings.
However, a second agenda item to authorize city staff to
advertise for bids for the museum finish-out contract and
to supply $252,048 in funding failed to receive a motion
and died on the table. Lynne Bryant, a League City
resident, hopes the motion stays dead.
"Many of you claim to be Republicans, but this Council is
spending like (Democrats)," Bryant said. "This was someone
else's dream and it has become our nightmare."
To illustrate her point, Bryant gave each councilmember a
cardboard box, challenging them 'to start thinking outside
the proverbial box, and concluded by saying the city will
be paying a lot of money to house dead animal parts. The
museum project, which was started by a previous Council,
will highlight the Butler longhorn cattle bloodline that
originated in League City.
