Rantoul IL — One of the last signs that Rantoul at one time held an Air Force base will vanish at the end of this year.
Chanute Air Museum, which has operated in the community since the spring of 1994 — just months after the closure of the base the previous fall — will close Dec. 30.
“This was not an easy decision for anybody,” Nancy Kobel, air museum board president, said.
She said finances was the primary reason for the action.
Village of Rantoul officials had asked the air museum to help pay more of its costs of operation. The village had footed most of the bill to keep the museum open and can no longer afford to do that, Jeff Fiegenschuh, village administrator, said.
Fiegenschuh and Rune Duke, airport manager, met with air museum officials Wednesday and received the news.
“We were surprised,” Fiegenschuh said. “We’d been meeting with the board now for some time to discuss opportunities to help them figure out some of the problems they’d been having.
“The village had been very supportive of them throughout the years. The goal was (that the) museum continue to operate.”
The closing is caused by a trickle-down effect of BRG Sports ceasing to be a long-time tenant of Hangar 1 at the airport — the lease had generated substantial income for the facility — and the construction of the new Lincoln’s Challenge Academy campus in Rantoul. The academy, which has been paying $18,000-a-year rent and $75,000 a year for utilities, will move out of Grissom Hall, which it shared with the air museum, and into its new campus in 2016.
Other Grissom Hall tenants are Rantoul Historical Society Museum, Rantoul Theatre Group and Rantoul Community Bicycle Recycling Program.
The air museum, which has a monthly operating budget of about $10,000, was paying the village $5,000 a year rent. The rent figure would also have climbed if the museum had remained in the building.
Fiegenschuh said the airport lost half a million dollars last year, and utility costs of $350,000 were a big part in that.
Kobel said air museum officials had studied several options to keep the museum open, including building a new facility and raising sufficient funds to pay the full cost of utilities and rent that would allow for “energy-efficient improvements to the building.” But it soon became apparent that closure was the only viable option.
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