Middletown Military Museum Raising Money For Veterans Park Location

MIDDLETOWN ? The Greater Middletown Military Museum will soon begin raising money to contribute toward a plan to build a new museum building at Veterans Memorial Park.

The museum's committee is rethinking plans made last year to use a modular building purchased from a local company, and instead will focus on a custom-built facility to meet the needs of the museum, said Ron Organek, the group's president.

Last year, the State Bond Commission approved a $300,000 allocation to the museum to help build its new location, which is planned to be one of the many features in a major overhaul of Veterans Memorial Park.

"We want to have a nice-looking building in the park up there because it's a park designed for veterans. In fact the park is dedicated to World War II veterans," Organek said. "Everything really right now is very up in the air as far as [the museum] goes. We will be quite flexible about where we end up in the park."

The museum had a temporary home for about a year in an outbuilding next to the Eckersley-Hall Building, the former St. Sebastian School which will be the future Middletown Senior Center.

The Greater Middletown Military Museum has a collection of uniforms, memorabilia, documents and a library of nearly 1,000 books on military history, Organek said.

Plans last year called for putting a prefabricated building purchased from ModSpace, a local company, for a gallery and archives. But the committee has opted to pursue a more flexible structure, Organek said.

"ModSpace has some really nice buildings, but we prefer to go with a stick-built building," he said.

The museum is one of two groups that are guaranteed to be included in the park's overhaul, said Councilman Todd Berch, chairman of a committee appointed earlier this year to oversee a plan for Veterans Memorial Park. The other is the Connecticut Trees of Honor Memorial, which will be the state's memorial to soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and the focal point of the park.

Other features could include playgrounds, a dog park, an expanded pavilion and a canoe and kayak launch.

"Basically, we have a blank canvas in front of us," Berch said. "It's the people's park, so we want the public's input and of course the veterans' input. There are a lot of ideas going on at the same time, so it's a neat commission."

Berch said the committee's goal is to present a consensus for the park's layout to the common council, which would then assign a building committee and figure out how to fund the park overhaul.

There will be a public hearing for residents to offer suggestions for the park's features at 7 p.m. on Aug. 28 in the Hubbard Room at Russell Library.

Source: http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-middletown-military-museum-0712-20130711,0,5019685.story?track=rss

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