Pueblo County Historical Society warns sale of B Street building would jeopardize museum collections and programs

Pamela Jacobson, president of the Pueblo County Historical Society and Heritage Museum, and Dr. John Wendt, the society’s executive director, told the council on March 17 that selling the B Street Building at 201 W. B Street would imperil the society’s collections, volunteer programs and free public events.

Jacobson and Wendt said the merged nonprofit now operates a public museum, a research library and a 1,400-square-foot Heritage Room used for meetings, talks and paid rentals. Wendt said the organization cares for roughly 35,000 individual artifacts and records, roughly 6,000 artifacts in museum holdings, and about 3,500 artifacts on exhibit. The Edward Broadhead Research Library holds about 20,000 original photographs, 1,500 books, 500 oral histories and more than 400 original maps and blueprints.

"The value of the Pueblo County Historical Society and Heritage Museum to our community of Pueblo is immeasurable," Jacobson told council. She said the museum has 4,745 dues-paying members, a 19-member board, and volunteers who logged about 4,350 hours in the year-to-date count presented to council.

Concerns about relocation and timing

Wendt told council the museum needs specialized digitization and conservation equipment and that relocation of fragile collections is time-consuming and expensive. The society estimated a conservative relocation cost in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars; Wendt said the organization currently anticipates roughly a quarter-million-dollar expense to move and re-house collections safely. He warned that a month-to-month lease with a possible 30-day notice would not provide enough time to protect loaned and donated materials: "If we were given 30 days to vacate the premises, 30 days is not enough time to do this and preserve the integrity of our collection."

The society said relocation would disrupt school tours, the monthly Pueblo Lore journal (the society has published a monthly journal continuously for about 50 years), private and public research services and a digitization program that recently acquired a professional-grade scanner with a $20,000 grant.

Lease and city options

City staff said the museum’s current arrangement is a month-to-month lease at $10 per year. City staff also told council that, in recent lease negotiations elsewhere in the city, a figure of about $12 per square foot was used as a reference for new museum leases. Jacobson and Wendt asked council to consider other options, including the city transferring full ownership of the building, offering a longer lease, or pursuing relocation planning with the society rather than an immediate sale.

Council response and next steps

Council members and Mayor Graham said they had not taken any final action and that the staff-led process that produced a recent public works presentation about potential sale was at an early stage. Councilors urged continued discussion, suggested negotiation of a new lease or an agreement of terms that would protect the collections, and asked the mayor’s office and museum leaders to keep talking as staff works on any potential disposition of the B Street Building.

Ending

Jacobson closed by asking councilors to tour the museum and review the collection; councilors thanked the museum’s volunteers and said they would continue discussions before any formal decision on the building.