OD/NG wrote:
thoots wrote:
Here is a bit of more recent news about the Evergreen Museum. The biggest bit is at the very end -- it's looking like the museum will lose its DC-3 and PBY Catalina. The DC-3 would be an absolutely bitter loss -- it was something like the first DC-3 ever sold to a commercial airline.
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2018/09/air_museum_landlord_crashes_to.htmlWow, embezzlement, fraud, potential ponzi schemes! What is going on?
What's going on is all about the guy who paid a few million bucks to pay for some part of the museum's many different corporations that went bankrupt, and now his whole empire is going bankrupt. He paid his money, there are no real issues with the museum as such -- the only real problem was that the company he paid to get it out of bankruptcy owned a number of planes, along with various pieces of property. He sold the museum's P-51 Mustang, and some other plane that I'm not aware of "which one it was," but he still owns that DC-3 and the PBY. It sure looks like those planes will get sold away from the museum eventually, and then the only real issue (as far as I understand, and of course I don't know all that much) is about the water park, which the guy owned outright, and wasn't paying the museum what he agreed to pay. I suppose someone else will wind up with that eventually, but it's not so much a part of the museum. All that said, he owns the Space Museum building -- can he sell that? But I don't know so much about that, either -- there are stories like he has leased it back to the museum for a dollar, or something like that.
The main thing that I'm concerned about is what the guy (Downs) has done with "the property he owns," like, for instance, a time during last winter when he rented out most of the Space Museum area to hold some kind of gymnastics meet, whereupon all of the planes and all of the helicopters in that building were moved outside, to sit outside in the rain for several months. In talks I've had with folks who work or volunteer at the museum, things have changed and something like that won't ever happen again, but with the latest developments, it's just the whole uncertainty of everything.
The Museum still has the Spruce Goose and many excellent planes and exhibits to keep the museum full with, and I've heard about plenty of other planes that they can bring in if and when they ever just go get them. So, I'm not too concerned that the museum won't still have a bunch of interesting planes and such to go check out. Moving different planes into the museum is usually a good thing -- it's just that the ones that get rotated out aren't coming back. But, most of the planes that have left have gone to the Collings Foundation, which bailed one of the other companies associated with the museum out of bankruptcy, and those will eventually be flying around -- and hopefully they will fly back some day. Really, the only thing that has bothered me has been this Downs guy -- I had no idea that he actually got some planes in the deal, and with his money troubles, those are assets that aren't very likely to be around much longer.
At any rate, given my limited knowledge about things, that's the perspective I've got.