Racing Pigeon Digest Current Issue Featured Article

From the Editor's Loft

By Gene Yoes
RPD Editor and Publisher

Location, Location & Location

A popular quote, often repeated in business circles, is that the three most important things to have a successful enterprise is, "Location, location and location."

I recently resigned my American Homing Pigeon Institute Director's position after I concluded that the museum was a failed experiment in its present location. I tried my best to get approval for another museum site in a place where those who financed it could and would visit it, but that seemed to be a losing proposition because a majority of the board, in my opinion, felt that if we just built a nicer building in Oklahoma City then the "goal" of the museum would be accomplished and more visitors would come. I believed the goal of the museum was much more than just getting a building built--it was for the museum to be visited by pigeon fanciers and non pigeon fanciers alike. As usual, Bill Bonwell started playing politics and I just felt that burying more time, effort and money into such a project was a waste for a museum isolated from the vast majority of the pigeon fancy and tourists.

A committee chose Oklahoma City, but it didn't choose Oklahoma City because it was the best site for the majority of the pigeon keeper population in the USA; it was chosen because sites were solicited from the membership and Oklahoma City was the best site of those offered--which might have been only two! The museum opened there in 1995-- 13 years ago.

But the truth is that if you were looking for the best site to place a national museum, one conveniently located near the travel routes of the majority of pigeon fanciers and a place where there was significant tourism traffic, Oklahoma City wouldn't even be in the ball park. Oklahoma City might be a great place to live and might have great pigeon fanciers, but it is a place where the vast majority of pigeon flyers is not going or even pass through on the way to somewhere else.

Are you planning a vacation around the Cowboy Museum or perhaps the Gymnastics' Hall of Fame-- and do not forget the Softball Hall of Fame? These are some of the noteworthy tourism magnets in OKC. How many of you have ever been to Oklahoma City, or better yet, are planning a vacation there. Truth is Oklahoma is not a tourism destination point for either pigeon flyers or non pigeon flyers and no amount of rationalization can change that--the facts are the facts.

The American Homing Pigeon Institute World of Wings Museum goes days without a visitor. Not only is there minimal visitor traffic, what traffic there is almost 50 percent from Oklahoma or states bordering Oklahoma. The placement of the museum there makes it purely a regional museum, not a national one.

The staff spends almost all its time not handling visitors because there are so few. They spend their time making sure that there is enough money to pay their salaries, although they argue that that time keeps the doors open. Keeping doors open for nobody to walk through seems to be a pointless exercise.

In 13 years, the board has never employed a single manager to run the museum that had any experience or education to run a museum-- not a single one of them could have gotten a similar job with another museum to be a curator. Thirteen years, three different general managers and not one in all that time has been able to organize the collection or competently promote the collection to the general public and researchers.

Thirteen years in the same location, three different general managers, and tons of money later, we find that the American Homing Pigeon Institute museum can't generate enough visitors in Oklahoma City and thus income that it can sustain itself or justify its existence. No academic researchers know it even exists. Pigeon fanciers have known it has been there for 13 years and they just don't seem to be going hundreds of miles out of their ways to visit the museum. And building a prettier building is not going to change that.

While on the Board of Directors, I suggested that we should look at setting up an experimental museum annex at another location because history showed that it just wasn't happening in Oklahoma City. In analyzing everything-- a place where pigeon fanciers had a better probability of visiting the museum, a place where there was a real tourist trade so that we could have a flow of non pigeon people visit the museum, and finally a place with a sizable pigeon fancier population that we might be able to get some volunteers, I thought that, at least for now, Spring Hill, FL was that place.

There are more pigeon flyers in one club there, the Gulf Coast Homing Pigeon Club, than they practically have in the whole state of Oklahoma! There are 5 to 10 visitors from other states to the GHC club every week who either visit old club mates who now reside there, or who drive the 85 miles from Orlando and Disney World just to see what Spring Hill is all about. And then there are futurity races such as the GHC Classic and Flamingo that draw hundreds of visitors for those races from all over the US, Canada and world. And does anyone dispute that Florida is the prime destination point in the tourism trade--how many of you have been to Florida and plan to vacation there one day versus how many have been to Oklahoma or plan a vacation to there anytime in your lifetime!

If the museum was relocated to another location, such as Spring Hill, FL, it might be a go. An experimental satellite museum there would test the waters and should be done before any major expenditure of funds for a new museum building in Oklahoma City takes place.

Albert Einstein said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." How many years will it take to realize that if we don't change the location of the museum, the lack of visitation will always be the same?