Warbird Information Exchange

The owners of the Tillamook Air Museum are in negotiations with the Port of Tillamook Bay to relocate to a facility that would be built alongside the planned Pelican Pub Brewery.

The owners are looking to move the museum from the space it currently rents from the Port – the World War II blimp hangar just south of Tillamook.

The hangar draws 70,000 visitors a year as the world’s largest wooden structure – but it’s also an aging building with poor heating and structural problems.

If an agreement is reached, the museum wouldn’t be moving far. Three-party negotiations among the Port, the brewery and the museum would develop Port property along Highway 101, within sight of the hangar. The museum and Pelican would be the first, anchor tenants of the development.

A revised letter of intent should be going to museum leaders this week, according to Port Manager Michele Bradley.

“We provided a draft to both the Pelican and the museum,” Bradley said. “The Pelican is ready to sign it. The museum was not pleased with it, so we have a revised version.”

If the project is approved, the Port would take out a state construction loan to develop the area, and the tenants’ rent would help pay back those costs.

But museum officials are looking at locations outside of Tillamook County as well. The internet-based news site News Lincoln County reported Aug. 18 that museum officials have approached both Newport and Astoria about relocating. Newport Mayor Mark McConnell told the site, “the city has been talking with the Jack Erickson family, who owns the aircraft and who would like to create a new facility to better display their considerable warbird collection, along with a cafe, gift shop and possibly some meeting or conference facilities.”

Port officials, however, are optimistic about their opportunity to provide the museum with a new building. The Port recently received a $50,000 planning and marketing grant from the Oregon Business Development Department and Infrastructure Finance Authority to study ways to develop the 130 acres of port property that runs along U.S. Highway 101 from about Long Prairie Road to South Prairie School.

The goal is to turn the new development into a “tourism-driven industrial area,” Bradley said.

In May, the Port Board voted unanimously to work with the Pacific City-based Pelican Pub and Brewery to build a second, much larger facility on Port property. The new operation would double the existing brewery’s production capacity and include a restaurant and viewing and tasting areas to entice visitors.

“People will be able to walk through and see how the beer is made,” Bradley said.

An early conceptual design by Scott Edwards Architecture, paid for by the Pelican, shows spaces for retail and light industrial offices, a golf course and club house, a 1,300-space parking lot, energy-generating wind turbines, and a large, unnamed addition pictured with an airplane nearby.

Port officials have now revealed that the space will hopefully house the new Air Museum.

The project continues to move forward, Bradley said, with the biggest hurdle still getting the city to extend sewer lines beyond the urban growth boundary. The Port currently operates a septic and lagoon system, but sewer lines would be necessary to handle the waste water output of a brewery.

I'll even sit in their HTK while it towed and make helicopter noises like I did when I played with toy helicopters as a kid.

I'm uncomfortable seeing aircraft collections housed in these old buildings this long after the war. A number of these have burned, taking out everything they contained.

And you know what? It just ain't EASY to make good helicopter noises, either. They really oughta take JohnB up on his generous offer.

Well, let me just give my enthusiastic TWO THUMBS UP to...the Pelican Pub and Brewery of Pacific City. My wife and I stayed a few days at a beautiful bed and breakfast in Pacific City back in 2007, and I had the absolute best meal of my entire life there. Those folks can do no wrong in my book.

Lynn