Milford Museum to take over old police station

The former police station will now be the home to the Milford Museum who plan to operate a visitor center from the building

Milford City Council unanimously approved a lease agreement with the Milford Museum which will allow the museum to move into the former police station on Northeast Front Street. The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Milford would move into the building with the museum in order to create a visitor center. Mayor Todd Culotta asked what the lease relationship would be between the chamber and the museum.

“Their intent is to form an MOU with the chamber, but also a sublease arrangement. As part of that sublease, any sublease that the museum does would have to be authorized by council, reviewed and authorized by council,” City Manager Mark Whitfield said. “So, when the time comes for that to happen, Claudia [Leister] will be back. Maybe not Claudia, but someone from the museum, we’ll come back.”

Mayor Culotta asked what the benefit was in having the chamber sublease from the museum rather than have two separate agreements with the building.

“I think, from an operational standpoint, and that’s primarily what both the museum and chambers= is looking for is being able to have a center that would be open for longer periods of time, that folks can come in, be able to either tour the museum or receive information from the chamber,” Whitfield said. “There’s also some synergy with the space in terms of shared costs. Right now, they’re in two separate buildings. Having them all in one, they will be able to reduce their cost and share those costs of a newer building. So, I believe I don’t want to put words in the folks from the museum his mouth, but I believe they have talked this over with the chamber.”

Claudia Leister, the former Executive Director of the Milford Museum and current volunteer curator, provided council with additional information.

“I have been the executive director of the Milford Museum for the past 11 years, up until last year, and now I’m the volunteer curator. Before this, there was no knowledge of what was in the collections exhibits and I put all these things together,” Leister said. “And about three years ago, our legislator Charlie Postles came to me, and he said, ‘What can we do for the museum? What do you need?’ And I said, more space. We need handicap restrooms. We need a meeting room, space to do further things here in the community.”

Leister continued, asking council how many of them had visited the museum and pointing out that many people who came into the current location stated they did not even know it was there. The hope is that by creating a visitor’s center at an entry point in town, there would be more traffic into the museum.

“There’ll be signage on the highway you can come right off into Milford to the building. And people that wouldn’t come to a museum will come to a welcome center. They’re looking for information on where to eat, businesses to go to, events that are going on with the chamber that we think we can fulfill this purpose and get people in the door,” Leister said. “And by the way, there’s a museum here. Wouldn’t you like to learn a little bit more about Milford? By being able to move it’ll help the chamber, and it will help us.”

Leister also pointed out that this could help the police budget as well.

“I know the chief will be happy to get somebody in there to take over the bills that they have been having to pay. We also understand you are out of space. You all move into our old building, then that would expand things for the city. So I really think this is a win win win  and that’ll be good for everybody,” Leister said. “The money that we did get, there is a date and end on that, and that is the end of May, at least, the first $750,000 that we got that we will put into the building to fix it up and make it habitable with all of the window air conditioners that are sitting in there. We know there needs to be a new HVAC system and a new roof, and we’ll get all of these things looked at.”

Councilman Jason James agreed that using state funding to perform necessary repairs on the building would be beneficial. He also suggested that since the lease states the museum would pay for the new roof and HVAC, but another clause states that any maintenance costs over $2,000 will be borne by the city, that a statement be made that clause takes effect after the larger repairs that must be made before the museum moves.

“One of the questions I have is that we still have to be able to maintain the outer sheds until we are able o get our building maintenance building built,” Chief Cecilia Ashe said. “Because we have equipment and stuff in those sheds, they need to be off limits.”

Whitfield explained that the lease does state the museum could not use the sheds on the property at this time. Council approved the lease agreement unanimously.