NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — The Quonset Air Museum is grounded — maybe for good.
The state-owned airport hangar at Quonset Point, which houses the museum and almost two dozen vintage military aircraft, sustained a partial roof collapse in March from heavy snow.
Safety officials condemned the building and the museum has no place to go, says its president, David Payne. Workers moved all the planes outside onto the tarmac.
“The history we have here is just unbelievable,” Payne said Wednesday as he roamed the cavernous hangar, pointing out some of the museum’s hundreds of aircraft artifacts. “All we are asking for is another place on Quonset because we are Quonset.”
But that is proving difficult, despite several meetings with officials from the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, which manages six airports, including Quonset.
“We have no facility to house them,” says Alan Andrade, the corporation’s senior vice president of operations and maintenance. “It’s not like we have an open hangar right now to move them into.”
Ideally, Andrade says, the museum would rebuild the hangar, originally built in the 1940s. The museum still has six years on its lease with the corporation and remains responsible for the hangar’s maintenance.
But Payne says the museum has barely enough money to operate now; its annual budget is less than $150,000.
“We’re trying to keep the history alive of Rhode Island’s contribution to aviation, but I don’t think anybody cares,” said Payne. He said the corporation has told the museum “they want us out by September.”
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