WHP 21 Lays The Smack Down on HBG’s Sports Hall of Fame
In a display of some fine journalism the likes of which this city has been mostly denied, WHP-21 reporter Jason Bristol shed some light on the financial quagmire known as the Sports Hall of Fame.
Bristol asked some pretty basic questions of Lavenda; and his answers made it quite clear that there is, perhaps, no real plan or possibility of Harrisburg having a sports hall of fame anytime in the near future.
Bristol asked Lavenda “Have you heard of the Sports Museum of America which is in New York?”
To which Lavenda replied: “From my understanding, they’re no further along than we are.”
And here’s where the proverbial bitch-slap comes in: The Sports Museum of America opened in May and boasts over one thousands sports exhibits including the Heisman Trophy and exhibits which allow visitors to participate in interactive activities like changing a tire on a NASCAR vehicle or seeing what it’s like to be an NHL goalie.
But Lavenda, the man earning one hundred thousand dollars per year to develop Harrisburg’s version of a sports hall of fame, was literally clueless about this massive display just three and a half hours from here.
Read Jason Bristol’s blistering report here.
And be sure to email Bristol commending him on a job well done here.
I was about to blog about this after I saw SmA fliers at the All-Star Fanfest at the Javits Center.
Great article. Hopefully this’ll put a lid on the Harrisburg Sports HOF. I can’t see Harrisburg competing with SmA’s location and exclusive contracts.
This scenario makes me think about the African American museum project and how Harrisburg failed to look at the struggles facing similar museums in larger markets.
I remember hearing about the SmA about a month ago. They have David Tyree’s helmet from “the Catch” in this year’s Super Bowl.
That place looks like it could blow the doors off of anything we could put together here, unfortunately.
Sports Hall of Fame? Does the city (I mean, Stephen Reed) think we’ve forgotten about the Wild West Museum?
Makes you wonder what other jobs are out there in Harrisburg that are really just ways to give money to folks for doing absolutely nothing.
Namaste.
I always find it unfortunate when passion for museums collides with reality. As a fan of museums, I don’t mind the idea of two museums doing similar/the same things in different markets. For example, almost every city worth visiting has a decent art museum. Almost every one of them boasts work by the same artists. So I don’t think just because there is one means there isn’t a reason for another to come in to being. Yet there must be compelling reasons for it to come into being, or it will fail. This is where real feasibility studies can come in very handy.
Museum projects are often insulated, vanity projects developed by an individual and his related yes men/women. Sometimes this results in having people who are less than model museum professionals guiding the operations. In twenty years of hanging around museums, I have seen this again and again. A Director that doesn’t know what anybody else in the field is doing. A Curator who puts together a show that someone else just put together five months ago fifty miles away.
The power of DC, Philly, NYC, and Baltimore will always suck Central Pennsylvanians away from the prize. It is cooler to tell your friends you saw a museum in New York than to tell them you went to the State Museum, The National Civil War Museum, or The Hershey Museum. Our regional museums suffer because of this, but it is unavoidable. It is futile to resist the magnetism of larger metropolitan areas. And you simply cannot compare Harrisburg to that. You just can’t. No matter how much you love Hbg.
One last thought, CBS21 did not, as the Patriot does not, flesh out the riptide and undercurrent of the real story here, the story of museums, museum development, and the changing ways people learn from and interact with objects. You can’t do that in a couple of minutes or in one news story in the Patriot, but if you did, it’d always be better. Nice to see at least 21 didn’t drag out Jason Smith for comment on a museum related thing as if he is the only expert in town.
The (Harrisburg) Sports Hall of Fame is undoubtedly why the esteemed Mayor Reed was chosen twice as “simply the best” in the latest Harrisburg Magazine.
So much for renewing that subscription
When will the people finally relize Levenda is just ripping off the city and has been for years. Hes in over his head ! Its so obvious that he was clueless to what the competition is going to be to a so called museum that usually starve to death anyhow. This man needs to go. One hundered Thousand dollars a year to a “bafoon” !