[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Daily Gazette Company presents the weighing in podcast, the show that brings you inside the Daily Gazette's feature news column. Now here's your host, writer of the weighing in column, Andrew Waite.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Andrew Waite. Thanks for listening. So after heavy rains last summer, the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, like a lot of us, dealt with some water in its basement and a good amount of water. And the problem is in the basement, that's where the museum houses its archives and its storage for items that are not on display. So it's pretty important that that basement be secured. And it wasn't just water. It was also the humidity that rose to dangerous levels. In terms of preservation, it was above 80%, which anything above 65%, you risk mold.
So museum leaders at that point decided it's time to look for a new building. And they'd already been kind of moving in that direction, but that was really.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: What broke the dam.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: And that has a lot of people in Schenectady worried that the museum is going to leave, because as museum leaders are looking for a new home and considering possibilities, they're looking in neighboring counties, in Saratoga county and Albany county and Renzelier county, and they are considering all options. And of course, the other option would be that my side would just close entirely, which really nobody wants to see.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: But.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: So, with this news breaking, we've known it for a couple months, but now with the conversation ramping up about the museum relocating and getting serious about relocating.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: There'S been a fair bit of concern.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Among many residents in Schenectady that the museum is going to move. And so they're wondering kind of if.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: It actually has to move. So I spent the beginning of my.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Week walking around the grounds of the museum and then also vale cemetery with a guy named Eric Johnson, who is.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Just pretty much just a concerned resident, but he has a little bit of.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: An expert eye in that he spent some time out west working for a.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: City water department, and he helped to.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Install a stormwater runoff system.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: So he's not an engineer, and he.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Doesn'T claim to be an expert, but he has some experience looking at drainage.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: And just when he walked around my side, just as part of his normal routine, he was noticing the water runoff.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: And was essentially just asking questions like, what has been done to mitigate the water flow? And if not enough has been done to this point, could there be an.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Easy fix where the museum could do.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: That and then not leave?
So here's part of our conversation.
[00:02:56] Speaker D: I guess I want to draw a boundary that I'm not going to conclude anything that's pointing fingers, but I do think that it is something that can be mitigated.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: And hard to know exactly for how much money.
[00:03:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:12] Speaker D: So there's been reports that the building is structurally the. What's the truth behind those reports?
[00:03:22] Speaker B: So I asked those questions this week, then to the Museum of Innovation and Science leaders, Gina Gould, the president, and Bill Swede, a board member, and Chris Hunter, who's the guy who handles the archives. He's been doing that for decades. And what they said was that, in actuality, they have not done an engineering.
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Study specifically on the water. And the reason is because after the flooding, they did bring in an engineer. But what that engineer said, and it.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Makes sense, in order to essentially see what the groundwater issue is, they would.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Have to drill holes through the museum's.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Basement, and that's how they would tell what the extent of the problems were and what the damage was, and then, therefore, what it would take to fix it. But in order to do that, the.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: Museum would have to move its archives.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: And its collections from out of its basement, which is an expensive and months long process.
So that's clearly something that museum leaders are hoping to avoid. And now, here we are. And I'll just want to play for.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: You a bit of my conversation with.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Gina, with Bill Sweet, and with Chris Hunter as I was touring the facility this week and just chatting with them.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: About the possibility of moving.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: And you can just hear directly from them a few minutes of how they.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Were talking about the situation.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: If money was no object, would there be a way to kind of mitigate the water and sort of rebuild on this site and stay here?
But even in that process, you'd have to pay to move, because in a construction site, you'd obviously have to move them out of a construction site.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:06] Speaker E: This is exactly why it's time to abandon the building. Because no matter what we do, we've got to move the things out of the basement to address what's happening underneath the foundation. And once we move them, why would we want to move them back?
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker E: When the building already has hvac issues, plumbing issues, electrical issues. It's round.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Well, if you had basically a rebuilt building, then it might be okay. Right? I mean, that's what it would sort of take.
[00:05:36] Speaker E: Right? What do you think that would be? What did you tell them?
[00:05:39] Speaker F: Andrew and I, we spoke about relocating, rebuilding on this site, and this site really wouldn't accommodate what we need to do. Ultimately, with 75 or 80,000. Did disclose that we do have a not for profit that's interested in buying the building and redeveloping the property for community benefit. It's not going to be the same community benefit as a museum, but it will provide a community benefit, which is great.
[00:06:01] Speaker E: We like.
[00:06:01] Speaker F: We're not at a point where we can really talk.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Yeah, understood.
[00:06:04] Speaker F: Of course.
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker F: But I will tell you, it is a not for profit and it would provide a community benefit.
Given that same question, what's our best scenario if money were not an object? And I said we basically go find a site that would work and construct a new building and build a museum building. Not try to retrofit an office building or retrofit an old train station.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Start fresh.
[00:06:26] Speaker F: Start fresh.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Is there a site in Schenectady that could work?
[00:06:30] Speaker F: There are probably vacant sites that could. Okay, yeah. But an existing building at this point is a.
You know, to talk about single floor square footage that we need, we can't go into an industrial park. Obviously the Gillesi group owns a lot of square footage that meets those requirements. But just taking a look at the shelving, you can see the floor loading that we have to be able to accommodate. So we can't go into a multi story building and expect to be able to put the collections and the archives on those floors. Because typically office buildings are designed about 100 pounds a square foot load and we need closer to 400 pounds. And ideally we want to be on a single floor.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Okay.
Yeah, sure.
[00:07:12] Speaker F: After bringing your child to the summer program, to be moving kids throughout a building is not really efficient.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker F: So a single story opportunity. So the one that come to mind, obviously, right away, you've got opportunities in Rotterdam that we're evaluating. But Viport mall or BJ's, that will be former BJ's when they move to their new location. Buildings like that. But as far as anything else that's readily available in the market, Schenectady county is kind of limited.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: If the city were to provide funding, could that change the thinking?
[00:07:49] Speaker F: Absolutely.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: And that last line from Gina Gould, the president says it all. She says absolutely, meaning absolutely. If the funding could come from the city or the county, they would consider relocating to a new site within Schenectady county. And that's it.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: I mean, I think that there's a.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Lot of people who would want to.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: Save Mysi at its current site. But short of that, there are even.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: More people who are adamant about keeping the museum, the former Schenectady museum in Schenectady county. And what Gina Gould is saying is put up some money and we can consider that.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: So that's probably what it's going to take, is for local elected officials to.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Be willing to put up some public funding to help keep my PSi in Schenectady.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: So there's a meeting this week, on.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Wednesday that's going to bring a bunch.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Of stakeholders together and we'll see what happens from that. But I hope that as the conversation continues, if my side the current site.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Can'T be saved, that at least the former Schenectady museum can stay in Schenectady county, home of General Electric and so much history. So here's that piece.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: In July 1968, just after the Schenectady Museum's collections were moved into the new hillside location above Knott Terrace, the building flooded.
A major rainstorm brought in mud and an inch of water, saturating hundreds of.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Boxes not yet put on shelves.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Textiles were destroyed.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Rocks and minerals had to be scrubbed and reorganized. According to the Daily Gazette archives of.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: The flood, the cleanup effort took staff and community helpers roughly four years.
The story now feels like a prophecy.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: In its half century of existence.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: The building of the Museum of Innovation and Science, as the museum came to.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Be called in 2012 to reflect its.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Broader focus, has dealt repeatedly with water issues.
A 1998 water main break pooled several inches in the basement, Hurricane Irene in 2011 flooded classrooms with stormwater. The building's roof began to leak in 2016, and last year's downright biblical rains overwhelmed a french drain installed in 2017, once again leading to standing water deep enough to soak shoelaces just steps from the museum's invaluable archives and artifacts, which include 10,000 patents and 2 million photos pertaining to the history of the electrical industry and general electric. Further compounding the concern, humidity in the basement spiked to 85% last summer, and cracks in the floor have formed beneath collections of everything from old toasters and fans to a bright red 1947 soapbox derby car painted with Schenectady gazette and white letters.
The threat of mold begins when humidity reaches 65%, according to Chris Hunter, vice president of collections and exhibitions, who has been with the museum for more than two decades. As a result, museum leaders, including president Gina Gould, concluded last summer that the time had come to relocate. It may very well be the right call for a variety of reasons, given the current compromised state of the building, as well as visions for the museum's future that include expanding its footprint. But as decision makers contemplate what's next, both museum leaders and elected officials must prioritize keeping the former Schenectady museum in Schenectady county if local representatives are serious about this cause, they will have to commit to reinstituting some level of public funding after county and city financial support was clawed back in the early 1980s. Without public support in Schenectady county, the museum is likely to relocate to somewhere else in the capital region, or else it could close entirely. That's a daunting prospect that could essentially see the archives and collections stripped and sold for parts sent piecemeal to far flung corners of the country.
Given the inauspicious start, perhaps a move out of the current museum site, which was built in a tabletop bowl that once housed school athletic fields, was always inevitable. But in recent years, museum leaders weren't yet convinced they had to abandon their current perch. In the spring of 2021, the museum brought in me engineering to conduct a facility study that focused on installing an hvac system that could deliver the tightly climate controlled environment the archives demand. The upgrades outlined in this report, as well as upgrades to other basic needs, such as to the electrical and plumbing systems, totaled more than 3.5 million. Museum leaders weren't deterred. We worked with emine and we put together a budget that would allow us to stay, said William Sweet, a MysI board of trustee member who was formerly a vice president of construction for Price chopper. But several attempts to attain grant funding for these repairs, including a 2022 attempt to allocate nearly 1.6 million for installation of an HVAC system at Mysai in a city of Schenectady community block, Grant fell through. The Mysi project was removed from the city's request when state office of Community Renewal officials determined Mysai had a more, quote, regional draw and therefore didn't match the city focused grant, according to Gould. In addition, the Schenectady City Council never opted to allocate american rescue Plan act funding for the museum. Since that time, repair needs have only increased as material costs have also ballooned. And then came the floods of 2023, breaking the dam.
Museum leaders brought in numerous engineers, including Labella associates, to assess what it would take to mitigate the water issues compromising the building's foundation.
They were told any estimate would require essentially poking holes in the basement floor. Such a procedure would mean moving the archives and collections from the basement, an involved, monthslong process that's estimated to cost 300,000 each time it's moved, and that's when we said we're done, Gould said. That means museum leaders don't know what it would cost to fix the groundwater issue at the current site. This is the leakiest part of the argument in favor of moving. It could be a quick fix, or it could be catastrophically expensive, Gould said. Still, given the amount of water damage already visible in the basement, from cracks to buckled shelving and the fact that stormwater overran the french drain on the museum drive side of the building last summer, it's reasonable to expect an expensive renovation involving a more elaborate french drain system would be required. Plus, whatever money would be needed to fix the water issues would come on top of other necessary repairs and upgrades. In addition, museum leaders say the current 42,000 square foot site is at its capacity to take additional archives, which they hope to do as they envision becoming a repository for all sorts of innovation happening in the capital region. From GE research to semiconductor development to artificial intelligence, the museum would need to roughly double in size.
It all adds up to anywhere from 8 million to 16 million to stay at the current site, according to museum leaders. So if we're going to invest the money that would have to be invested to improve this facility, it makes much better sense to invest those capital dollars into a facility that will more closely match what our needs are going to be going forward, Sweet told me in the Mysi basement this week. As the conversation moves ahead, it's imperative that everyone makes sure that the math adds up and that the cost of rehabbing the current site truly does come close to matching the roughly 16 million to 20 million that museum leaders say would be needed to build an entirely new facility at a different site. If the math works, my side deserves a new home.
Simply put, we'd be mistaken to get bogged down in sentimentality surrounding the current building. It's not an architectural marvel, according to Mary Zawaki, executive director of the Schenectady County Historical Society. In fact, when the museum was being built in the 1960s, the project nearly ran out of money, Zawaki said. They'd intended it to be a lot bigger and a lot fancier than what it turned out to be. They kind of stopped construction maybe a third of the way through, and they cut a lot of corners, Zoaki said. The building has no weatherproofing, no moisture control. What's more, the building does not, in fact, have consequential historical value. About a decade ago, museum staff approached the state's historic preservation office about the possibility of listing the building on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was deemed ineligible because of changes to the exterior in the 1990s. Zawaki doesn't see a compelling case for the building ever finding its way onto the registry, she said. I don't think it has any historical significance. It was built for Maisai in the that's what it's been ever since. There are a lot of buildings throughout the county that are very much worth preserving to keep the interesting character that Schenectady has, and I wouldn't include my PSI on that list. Gloria Kishton, chair of the Schenectady Heritage foundation, sees it differently. She said she'd like to see the building preserved because renovations were designed by storied Schenectady architects Warner Fibus and James Schmidt. But it's hard to see how some meeting spaces in a lecture gallery, in a portfolio that includes the city's library and police station, rises to any sort of capstone status. For Schmidt and Fibis, the travesty that absolutely must be avoided is losing the museum and its collection entirely. So going forward, the focus has to be on keeping the museum alive and keeping it alive in Schenectady.
The collection is absolutely invaluable, Zoaki said. This area has a very long history of science and innovation, and Mysai has the potential to be a forward looking window, a handson, interactive, state of the art exhibition that bridges Schenectady's engineering past with the future of engineering and science and technology.
The museum, which is only open to the public on weekends, brings in school groups from 37 New York counties throughout the year, and it regularly works with researchers from 30 countries, getting 1500 research requests a year from playwrights, PhD candidates and many others.
Not surprisingly, the museum already has many suitors situated in neighboring counties. And, as Times Union columnist Chris Churchill wrote, the New York State Museum in Albany may be a fit, Gould said. An ideal arrangement is a partner that's willing to provide some amount of financial support, as happens at facilities in other New York cities where the municipality owns the building and provides help with annual operating costs. For too long, Mysi has operated solely with private funding. We personally feel a real responsibility that these things are part of Schenectady's history and part of the electrical history, said Neil Goleb, chair of the museum's board of trustees and retired priceJopper CEO. Golib has provided hefty financial support to my side for decades. Neither the city nor the county has put up a dime for this wonderful facility for so many years, Golib said. Elected officials, museum leaders and others will be meeting this Wednesday to discuss the options surrounding Maisai. The meeting was convened by state assemblyman Angelo Santa Barbara. There has to be interest at all levels of government, Santa Barbara said. And what I said is I'm willing to help. Who will join me? Who wants to be a partner in this? But it's not yet clear whether county or city leaders are willing to financially back the museum. Schenectady county legislature chair Gary Hughes told me he's open to public support so long as few criteria are met. Obviously, he'd want any future site to be within Schenectady County. Hughes also wants to see evidence that museum leaders have truly done their due diligence in determining that the current site isn't viable. Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy did not return a request for comment.
As for the current site, museum leaders say they have a potential buyer, a nonprofit that would provide some level of community benefit. The concept would call for redeveloping the site, which would mitigate the drainage issues in the process. Schenectady County Metroplex Development Authority chairman Ray Gillan confirmed he's heard about the potential for a purchase. I think there are a few housing developers who are looking at it, that's all I can say, Gillan told me. So no, it wouldn't quite be the same benefit as a museum board member, Sweet said. But I think it would be something that the community would wrap their arms around, as much as they would hate to see us go. Meanwhile, the museum that currently sits on the hill above Knott terrace continues to be at risk of flooding. Sweet estimates the museum has only two years left before the building is no longer viable. Another summer of heavy rain could accelerate that timeline.
Do we find an alternate location and do we secure funding? We need to get there or are we closing up?
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Sweet asked.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: At the end of the day, those are the bottom line questions. And now we come to read a response. Since we have not been doing a podcast for a couple of weeks, I'll just remind you that we welcome letters and feedback. You can email me or call me. My email is
[email protected] and my cell phone will put it in the show notes.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: And it's at the bottom of every.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Column that I write. And if you wanted to leave a voice memo, I'd be happy to play it on the podcast.
That's all for this episode, thanks to Proctor's theater and to openstage Media for a new partnership with the Gazette that's helping to produce this podcast, and specifically Zebulon Schmidt and Jeremy Klo. They are the guys making it it happen. Thanks to Aaron Palaya, who handles marketing for the podcast. I'm Andrew Waite.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Take care.
