Dear Editor,
I have been following the Old Downtown Kingman Restoration project with great concern. I have been a Kingman homeowner for only about 5 years now and the small-town charm that lured me and my wife to retire in Kingman has day by day lost some of its attraction due to ever-rising issues associated with uncontrolled growth. I hear many citizens with similar stories and inevitably city residents are seeing little relief from the growth issues but rather the current focus by the city on Old Downtown and Tourism.
It was not long ago the city wanted to invest in a 25-foot-tall waving cowboy as an addition to the Old Downtown landscape. We can only hope that idea has been scrapped due to a huge negative public uproar when the story hit the news. Now something even bigger is on the table. A private non-profit company wishes to acquire a city-owned building that resides in the location where a proposed Electric Vehicle Museum Complex would be built as a tourist attraction. I humbly believe this would be a huge miscalculation and a serious short circuit. What is really bigger on the table is a bigger mistake. When people from around the world come to Kingman the Route 66 theme is one of our biggest attractions so if we must have another museum, let alone a museum complex, why not capture the theme and the very personality of our town by offering a Classic Car Museum?
I don’t think tourists would honestly get “amped up or charged” out of seeing old or new electric cars. On the other hand, I am very certain they would get all “gassed up and on fuel” in seeing the beautifully restored “classic cars”, most of which are proudly restored here in Kingman.
Classic cars historically have traveled the famous Route 66 highway throughout the years. From what I have heard many classic car owners in town and locally would entertain allowing the city to display their cars (on some sort of temporary viewing consignment) for agreed-upon intervals of time. Many of our classic car owners have multiple classics. I cannot think of a better way to reflect the real personality of Route 66 and bring Old Downtown together with the rest of Kingman. An attraction like this would mean a fixed car show in town 7 days a week and all hours the museum would be open to both the local public and also to tourists. Using locally owned classics would ensure that returning tourists would always have a variety of different cars to view with a rotating showroom inventory. Whether tourists or local residents the classic cars will always bring back real American nostalgia for Kingman, the automobile, and the open road.
Although more information may be available on the selling of the building, other questions come up. Who is the Private Company? What do they gain if they are non-profit? What is their agenda with Electric Vehicles? Would the city have any control of the museum? Somewhere I read this proposed facility would garner 3.4 million yearly in revenue. Who gets that revenue? The City of Kingman cannot afford a miscalculation and an EV Museum would be a huge mistake. If you are skeptical do your own survey and you will hear things like “Electric vehicles have no legacy on Route 66 and even less charisma. An EV Museum does not make much sense however I absolutely love the Classics American cars and Hotrods and their history”. I think the message is clear, the city should NOT sell the building to accommodate anything but a Classic Car Museum and or Complex.
“No E.V. for me, thank you. I’ll take the Model T”.
Elliot Chalew
Candidate Kingman City Council
