The Illinois Basketball Coaches Association announced it is ending its pursuit of a Basketball Museum of Illinois in Pontiac because it fell short on fundraising.
The museum was supposed to be in a vacant Kmart building in Vermillion Square in Pontiac, next to old Route 66 on the city’s southwest edge. The museum also was planned to be next to a Route 66 Museum of Transportation; the fate of that museum remains unknown
The city council in March 2017 signed off on the basketball museum project to go ahead.
The museum was slated to be another jewel in the city’s crown that included the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, Pontiac-Oakland Automobile Museum, Livingston County War Museum and the International Walldog Mural and Sign Art Museum.
However, the coaches association couldn’t raise the $5 million needed for construction, operations and an endowment.
The Decatur Herald & Review reported:
“This is one of the big disappointments of my life that this didn’t happen there (in Pontiac),” said IBCA Museum Chairman Bruce Firchau. “There wasn’t anything more we could have asked from the government of Pontiac, the school district and the park district. They bent over backwards and were very patient with us.
“It (fundraising) was like pushing a big rock up a hill. Colleges and universities have hired staff with a dozen or more people to raise the kind of money I was trying to raise by myself. Where we struggled was we just could not get the lead donor where the dominoes could fall in place.” […]
“From day one, their biggest challenge was raising sufficient funds to develop the museum,” agreed Pontiac city administrator Bob Karls. “As time went on, it became quite apparent that was a bigger challenge than they were able to do. They came to that conclusion and I know it’s difficult.
“This is almost two years ago we had our initial agreement. There were mile posts along the way to seeing what the status was. Each of those passed and the agreement really had expired in terms of ‘they would have the funding by such and such a time.’ But we agreed with nothing else in the pipeline, let’s see if we can make this happen.”
Firchau said potential donors were concerned about the museum’s sustainability, despite citing strong attendance figures at the other museums in Pontiac.
The Pontiac Daily Leader reported:
On Sept. 7, 2017, none other than Dick Vitale, the famous ESPN college basketball broadcaster known for catchphrases like “this is awesome, baby” visited the Elks Lodge in Pontiac to rally up support for the museum as well as the V Foundation, a charitable cancer research foundation.
“I think having a museum here is going to bring identity for the city in terms of basketball,” he said in the article. “You have (the holiday) tournament here every year that’s really highly acclaimed, so I think having a museum right here is going to be special.”
Organizers had planned the museum to be more than artifacts, history and images. It also would have featured interactive displays, including a miniature hardwood court, and would have been used as an event center.
Firchau said the coaches group will re-evaluate its options for the museum. The city will explore new options for the empty Kmart building.
(Artist’s rendering of Basketball Museum of Illinois via IBCA)