Mascot Hall of Fame will close museum if a redevelopment plan goes through (2024)

The original Phillie Phanatic, David Raymond, had a dream of a hall of fame that would honor mascots the same way athletes in basketball, baseball, football, hockey and other sports get enshrined in immortality.

The Mascot Hall of Fame he envisioned started out as an online hall of fame that enshrined new inductees every year at a ceremony in Pennsylvania. It celebrated legendary mascots like the Suns' Gorilla, the Famous Chicken, Bucky Badger, the Jazz Bear, Brutus Buckeye and KC Wolf.

His vision became a reality when the $18 million,25,000-square-footMascot Hall of Fame and Interactive Children's Museum opened on the site of a former lumber yard in downtown Whiting, Indiana, near the Lake Michigan beach in late 2018. The three-story shrine to the fuzzy, furry mascots who have long delighted fans of both professional and collegiate sports made an immediate impression, juxtaposing a modern glass-and-steel building with the giant googly-eyed face of its Reggie mascot with a giant booger hanging from his nose and his hand holding up a television screen displaying upcoming events like mascot appearances.

The colorful monument to the goofy side of sports attracted significant media attention, including from ESPN, WBEZ, WGN, WTHR, the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis Monthly, the South Bend Tribune and many other outlets.

The Indianapolis Star described it as "a piece of Disney right in Indiana." ESPN called it "Raymond's grand folly," describing the surrounding area as the "sulfurous fetor of the industrial Illinois-Indiana borderland" and "a woebegone landscape of liquor stores, discount tobacco shacks and forsaken gravel lots."

But now it may be game over for the attraction, which is ranked as Indiana's eighth best children's museum by Tripadvisor but was just named USA Today 10Best's No. 1 Pop Culture Museum in the United States a few months ago.

Whiting Mayor Steve Spebar said the Mascot Hall of Fame and Interactive Children's Museum would close if a developer stepped forward to develop an office complex in the surrounding Stadium District. Spebar said it has been costing the city about $500,000 a year in tax dollars when it was originally hoped to be self-sustaining, and Whiting is now hoping to bring in commercial development that would generate tax revenue instead.

"Depending on the agreement, the Mascot Hall of Fame would cease operations," he said. "It would continue down the road online like it was before the museum was built. Whiting owns the building but Dave Raymond owns the Mascot Hall of Fame."

Spebar said the museum never became self-sustaining as planned.

"It's done better since opening after COVID but it's never done financially well," he said. "That's no fault of the staff, who have done a fantastic job. We're doing much better than when we first opened but it financially never performed as expected."

Whiting typically budgets $700,000 to $800,000 for the museum every year and only brings in a fraction of that back to cover operating expenses.

"The museum was supposed to be self-funding through museums and attendance," he said. "But there were never enough sponsors or funders to pay for expenses."

Whiting is now looking to develop a new office complex along Front Street and 119th Street near Oil City Stadium. The redevelopment commission put out a request for proposal for redeveloping city-owned properties in the Stadium District that extends fromthe alley east of Schrage Avenue on the west side, Old Center Street on the north side, Front Street on the east and 121st Street on the south side.

The lakefront city is seeking to sell40 city-owned properties along Front Street and 119th Street for $20.4 million to any interested developers. It includes theMascot Hall of Fame at 1851 Front Street, which is valued at more than $13 million.

Any developer would have to pay off the $11 million still on the Mascot Hall of Fame's bond as well as the cost the city had to buy and demolish the other properties in the Stadium District.

Whiting hopes to take a property that's not on the tax rolls and bring in anywhere from $2 million to $400 million in assessed valuation.

"They don't pay any taxes. They take out of the city budget. So there would be an immediate benefit to a redevelopment. Assessed valuation potentially would be a major impetus of the project," he said. "It could bring us financial security."

Spebar said there would be other economic benefits for the small lakefront city, which has the largest refinery in the Midwest but a population of less than 5,000.

"The project could bring up to 1,000 people on the edge of the business district on 119th Street and businesses would greatly benefit from that," he said. "The office workers would be just a hop, skip and jump from the downtown."

Former Mayor Joe Stahura originally intended for the Mascot Hall of Fame to be part of a larger museum campus that would include a Chicago Baseball Museum and expanded Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Museum but those plans never came to fruition after he was charged with wire and tax fraud and left office.

The museum district idea is dead and the Mascot Hall of Fame may be shuttered and converted into office space.

"If there's a deal struck, they'll be closing," he said. "It's no reflection on the staff, which has done a great job. They've got Whiting on Good Morning America, Nightline and USA Today. It draws from all over the United States. People come here on vacation. It's got its loyal following. But it's a business decision and we have to move forward. The city hope for a better financial picture over time and unfortunately now a potential sale is being considered."