New Museum in SC: The people behind the Motor Racing Museum of the South, targeted for a 2005 opening on Pine Street in Spartanburg [SC], hope to return the city to its former prominence as a motorsports hub. Work has begun on the $20 million facility at the site of the former Beaumont Mill, a textile factory. The building and the grounds were donated to the museum by Spartanburg businessman Jimmy Gibbs. The museum complex also may house the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame, an organization without a home. Negotiations with hall officials are continuing. The racing museum has been in design stages for about two years, and fund-raising events featuring Pearson and Moore produced money for planning and administration. More fund-raisers are planned, and museum development director Paul Ianuario said the museum will be built with a combination of public and private funding. The South already is home to numerous racing museums, including the Joe Weatherly Stock Car Racing Museum in Darlington, the new Thunder Road USA museum in Dawsonville, Ga., Daytona USA adjacent to Daytona International Speedway in Florida and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and Museum in Talladega, Ala. The Spartanburg museum will stand apart, Ianuario said, because its proposed design will educate visitors not only about race car drivers and their cars but also about the times and conditions in which they raced. The centerpiece of the museum, as it is currently planned, will be a speedway “straightaway” that will provide a walking avenue through a series of displays dedicated to auto racing in particular decades. Racing dioramas would include replicas of buildings and other scenes from the time period. The 170,000-square-foot facility also might include a large-screen theater, an upscale restaurant and a working garage area that could house a small racing team.(Greenville News)(6-27-2002) (6-26-2002)
