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Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun
The historic Boulder Dam Hotel in downtown Boulder City was built in 1933.
Thursday, July 16, 2009 | 3:59 a.m.
Boulder Dam Hotel
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An angel may be waiting in the wings to save the Boulder Dam Hotel.
Board members of the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association are scheduled to meet Thursday with lawyer Ralph Denton about facilitating a contribution that could reopen the historic hotel and its museum.
The nonprofit association owns the hotel, its restaurant and Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum, which is located on the hotel’s mezzanine.
Denton told the board during a special meeting Wednesday night that he is willing to negotiate with the board and an anonymous donor to bring in $260,000 to keep the museum operating into the new year.
He suggested that he might also join with donors to create an endowment to ensure the hotel and museum’s long-term future.
The Boulder Dam Hotel, its restaurant and the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum closed July 11 after the association ran out of money. It was three mortgage payments behind, had insurance payments due and owed vendors.
It was, however, able to pay employees their final paychecks.
Board members said they expected the Boulder Dam Credit Union, which holds $940,000 in mortgages, to begin foreclosure proceedings on Monday.
The historical association last week failed in a last-ditch effort to get city redevelopment authority funds to remain open.
Denton, who leases an office in the hotel, made his offer at the end of a special board of directors meeting called to discuss the long-term future of the museum’s archives if the hotel were to remain closed.
“If an anonymous donor came forward this week and offered $260,000, would that keep it open?” he asked.
“We were told that amount of money should keep the hotel afloat, based on projected income,” board member Bret Runion replied.
Board member Rod Woodbury added, “Every day that goes by, it gets tougher to start all over again. What might save the hotel with $250,000 now or in a month might not be enough in five months.”
Denton said he would be willing to negotiate bringing a gift to the historical association, but he would want to see city officials sit on an auditing committee to assure him about the financial future.
Woodbury said the association’s books are open. “We are proud of the way this is being run,” he said.
Hotel board members said they have received calls from people who say they might be interested in buying the hotel, but they agreed not to consider a sale until they have had time to raise money to save it as a nonprofit.
If the association loses the hotel, however, the board discussed what would happen to the association’s extensive collection of Hoover Dam and early Boulder City artifacts.
Dennis McBride, former Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum curator who now is a curator at the Nevada State Museum, offered a partnership with the state museum, which he pointed out has just completed construction on a new 78,000-square-foot building at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve.
The historical association could give the collection to the state museum, which has the space and staffing to consolidate it and continue to add to it, McBride said.
The historical association’s collection is now split among the hotel basement, the basement of the Boulder City Library and storage units at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Boulder City.
The state museum could then allow the historical association unlimited free use of the materials in exhibits and programs at the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum, he said.
Current Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum Curator Shirl Naegle told the board that the archive is safe in the basement of the hotel for now and that the first choice should be to keep it in Boulder City and accessible to the public.
However, he said, the options to keep it in Boulder City — primary among them the basement of the Boulder City Library — would not allow them to be accessible.
Short of that, Naegle said, the archives should be kept in Clark County and remain accessible to the public.
“Ideally, if you could keep it in Boulder City, that would be great,” McBride said. “If you can’t keep it in Clark County, keep it together as a collection. Don’t break it up. If you lose one piece of it, the rest is diminished in value.”
Naegle added, “You don’t want to lose that mass. Then it is no longer identifiable as a collection.”
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Isn't this just another band "aid" fix for awhile?
We are so fast to demolish our past. The Boulder City Hotel/Museum is a valuable look at our past. I feel the hotel and the collection are synonymous and should be kept together. Our children and their children need to know how we became and flourished here in the desert.
If this is a band-aid, then that means all of us should help and apply a little "ointment" ( donations I am sure will be gladly acepted!)and keep it alive!
Without our past there is no future! These are the cornerstones we have used to build the present and hopefully the future.
how about a group made called something like, Friends of Boulder City Hotel (or Historical Society), and offer memberships (with some kind of benefit) at different levels? these would be annual donations. i would join in a heartbeat. this is a beautiful piece of history we southern nevadans should not lose.
the news certainly caught my attention to losing such a lovely period hotel, but i never knew there was a museum. that adds to the value of keeping this!
Do you really think people will be interested in this place a hundred years from now? By then there probably won't even be a Boulder Dam.
...ahhhh, nice to know that people spending their own money on things and causes of their own choices is still allowed in the United States of America...hopefully, our new President of Change and his minions will be defeated before this type of 'philanthropy' vanishes...
Hey this is great news. Personally I would not donate a nickle for the Hotel, without a management change, but this is free country, and its great that private property gets private money, and NOT tax payers money. Great news, because I am positive that the City would of eventually forked over our hard earned tax money on this place, and that is not right.
The hotel is a national treasure. Why can't the National Park Service take over ownership? Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco has done a great job of running historical sites like this, Lake Mead should do the same!
The best thing about BC is the fact that there are over 15,000 citizens who individually know how to manage an agency or an entity better than the current management. God bless the anonymous donor for putting up his or her hard earned money to save this landmark.
How did this all come up at the last minute? Either they get tax dollars or close down right away? Something doesn't seem right here. Seems like very poor planning.