Will Tillamook support the Air Museum?
by Sayde Moser
It’s been an icon in Tillamook since WWII – the massive wooden hangar used to house blimps in the 1940s.
Dubbed “Hangar B,” it measures 1,072 feet long, 296 feet wide and 175 feet high and includes 10,349,500 board feet of lumber – one of the largest wood clear span buildings in the entire world.
Similar hangars were built all over the country to house blimps, with a few still standing and being used for various different things. In 1973, the Navy vacated its base in Tillamook and in 1973 the structure was deeded to the Port of Tillamook Bay.
Since 1994, Hangar B has been home to one of the top five privately owned aircraft collections in the nation – but not much longer.
Erickson Group LLC, which owns the planes and operates the museum has informed the Port of Tillamook Bay that it won’t be renewing its lease in January of 2016. The planes are being moved to a facility in Madras as soon as next summer.
While port general manager Michele Bradley said the port could decide to continue using the structure as a museum (they have several planes on loan from the Department of the Navy), it still raises the question: what will happen to Hangar B.
“It wasn’t built to last this long,” Bradley said. “There is a lot of work that needs to happen to keep it standing.”
Some of that includes repairing the roof. (A similar hangar in Tustin, Calif. that was built by the Marine Corps Air Station just suffered partial roof collapse, causing county officials to question the safety of the structure. The hangar is owned by the Dept. of Navy but is in the process of being conveyed to the county, which has plans to incorporate the northern hangar, which had the partial roof collapse, into an 84.5-acre park.)
The north door is also in need of some repair, Bradley said, and unfortunately, these repairs are all in the millions of dollars.
Bradley said they were contacted by Wings of Freedom, a restaurant/museum out of Milwaukie, Ore. who was interested in expanding their operation into Hangar B. According to their website, their mission is “to increase community awareness through education and showcasing World War II live.” However Bradley couldn’t say how serious they were about leasing the space from the port.
Port Commissioner Bob Olsen suggested putting the fate of the building in the voter’s hands with a possible bond on the May 2014 ballot. The money generated by such a bond could help repair some of the damages and help the port assess whether or not the community is interested in investing in the building.
If not, Bradley said she didn’t think it should be the port’s responsibility to maintain the building.
“Regardless of who is in there that building was not meant to last 70, 80, 90 years,” she said. “We still need to deal with the structure itself… If we put $15 million in it, how many years will it take to recoup that? We don’t want the burden all on our shoulders.”
One option might be going back to the Navy and asking for help. Another might be petitioning for some of the Transient Lodging Tax dollars, should that measure pass the November ballot.
“Even if we could get some to do some engineering to repair the doors would be a help,” she said.
If not, Bradley said that once Erickson Group’s lease is up if no one else has shown interest to take it over, the port might have to consider tearing it down. Yet even dismantling it would cost in the millions of dollars, Bradley said.
“For 20 million we could take it down, or put 15 million into and try to get it to last another 50 years,” she said.