Reposted from DL Online

When the Becker County Historical Society embarked on a $3.2 million fundraising campaign to build a new county museum last fall, they knew the need was urgent: The current facility, located at 714 Summit Ave., had developed significant structural issues, particularly with its leaking roof.

But this past week, it was once again illustrated just how critical this issue has become, as the museum's research library sustained "significant damage" from a leak that had expanded during a recent spate of rain, says the museum's executive director, Becky Mitchell.

"Public access to the research library will be very limited while we work to fix the damage," she added, noting that they are in the process of moving some stackable shelving into the research library area that will provide better protection for the books and other research materials that are stored there.

"We were gifted with this shelving by the county," said Mitchell, adding that the new shelves are stand-alone and do not need to be placed along the museum walls, which is where the water leaks have mainly occurred.

Because the shelving units are large and difficult to move from one location to another, they had hoped to save them for use in the new museum building — but this most recent water damage incident has changed their plans, Mitchell said.

"It's (moving the shelves) going to be quite a large undertaking, and the shelving units are going to take up a lot of space that we don't have," she added, "but keeping our research library materials and museum artifacts safe to the best of our ability is the priority."

While access to the research library will be restricted, those who need to access those resources will be able to do so.

"We encourage people who want to use our research library to call ahead and reserve a time," says Jennifer Johnson, the museum's research library director. "Also, if they can, please let us know ahead of time what they want to research, so I can pull the materials and have them ready to use when they arrive."

There has also been some water damage in the exhibit area on the museum's upper level, Mitchell said, so while all of the exhibits will remain open to the public, "some items will need to be assessed and possibly moved to off-site storage."

All of these actions are "temporary fixes," however — Mitchell says that the Historical Society has been working with the Detroit Lakes Community & Cultural Center, Chamber of Commerce, and representatives from both the City of Detroit Lakes and Becker County on developing a new construction plan for the museum building that will, hopefully, address some building and parking deficiencies for both the museum and the DLCCC.

"We hope to have a plan ready to be presented to our (Historical Society) members and (museum building project) donors in late October or early November," says Mitchell. "We want to see if it's a better alternative (than the original building plan) in terms of long-term sustainability."

The ultimate goal, Mitchell added, is "to come up with a plan that's going to carry us — not just the museum, but the community center and the (Historic Holmes) theater — through the end of our lifetimes. We want to build a facility that's not so large we can't afford it, but at the same time, is large enough to accommodate growth for the next 40-50 years.

"The historical society has been around since the late 1800s," she said. "We need to do everything we can to save what we have (i.e., research materials and artifacts) and make sure it's here for future generations."

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