9/11 Museum to charge $20-25 for admission

[BvBPL]

The 9/11 museum states that it will charge $20-$25 dollars for admission. This is to cover the estimated $60 million / year operating costs of the museum.

$340k of that $60 million goes to Joseph Daniels, President and CEO of the Museum. Daniels is responsible for fund raising promotions like selling a poster of a motorcycle in the museum’s store.

In contrast, the fire commissioner of NYC, as of 2005, made ~$162k/yr and Ken Feinberg worked 33 months to manage the compensation fund for free.

 

[Cheetah]

Sounds reasonable.

 

[Lillefix]

$340k of that $60 million goes to Joseph Daniels, President and CEO of the Museum. Daniels is responsible for fund raising promotions like selling a poster of a motorcycle in the museum’s store.

I'm sure he does other things as well. But it's very well paid yes.

 

[Thedrin]

$60 million / year operating costs

?

 

[BvBPL]

Yep.

Of course only about .5% of those costs go to Daniels, but when you consider that the top eleven executives of the museum get paid a sum of $2.8million /yr, that means 4 and 2/3% of the operating cost go to eleven people in a non-profit.

 

[Thedrin]

Is it normal for a museum to have such high operating costs? How do any stay open?

 

[BvBPL]

Apart from the salaries mentioned above, I'm sure the operating cost for this museum is inflated by the real estate upon which it sits, which is some of the most valuable in the world.

 

[Formaldehyde]

They should sell miniature 9/11 crosses.

It’s ridiculous,” said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, who lost his firefighter son Jimmy. “We asked for a memorial and they’ve turned this into a P.T. Barnum production. These people are trying to make money off the worst day in American history.

 

[dutchfire]

I think €20 is not unreasonable for a museum, though €15 would be more around what I would expect to pay for a museum. Empire State Building is $25, just for the record.

$340k a year is quite a lot. It is not unreasonable for a company of this size, but one would hope people to not demand the highest pay if they are working for a non-profit.

 

[Formaldehyde]

A free open-air memorial with perhaps a few open-air pavilions for the exhibits that would rust if exposed to the elements would have made far more sense.

We don't charge people for visiting the Washington Monument (except for a nominal service charge to get advance tickets) or the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials. This should be no different

 

[dutchfire]

If you make it free, the terrorists have won. It's just not the American thing to do.

 

[Goodfella]

Is it normal for a museum to have such high operating costs? How do any stay open?

Taxes, admission fees, and endowments. I don't think this is that unusual for national museums like this. The Smithsonian institution has a budget of around $800 million and the Newseum's is around $90 million.

If you make it free, the terrorists have won. It's just not the American thing to do.

If it's free there won't be a museum. But I guess the government could and probably should subsidize it.

 

[Thedrin]

I can fully understand major museums having such high budgets. I may have underestimated the scope of the 9/11 museum. Are they displaying all of the surviving cross beams?

 

[Borachio]

Is it a museum or a memorial? I would expect the latter to be free. But I can't see it being much of a museum. What's to go in it but a lot of building scrap and photos?

 

[Souron]

So non-profit tax-filing organizations have a profit motive. Old news. The real question is, how do we fix it?

 

[Goodfella]

Is it a museum or a memorial? I would expect the latter to be free. But I can't see it being much of a museum. What's to go in it but a lot of building scrap and photos?

It's a museum and a memorial and the memorial is free but the museum isn't.

The memorial consists of the holes in the ground and the museum is the building.

 

[BvBPL]

A free open-air memorial with perhaps a few open-air pavilions for the exhibits that would rust if exposed to the elements would have made far more sense.

Is it a museum or a memorial?

There is a free memorial with which the museum is associated.

Of course, the free memorial is being prepetually trashed by disrepectful teenagers.

 

[Kennigit]

I'm puzzled by the 60 million a year operating cost.

Spoiler :

For instance, the smithsonian institutions all are free admissions (a lot of the museums of the US), and looking at page 18 of their federal appropriations requests:
http://www.si.edu/content/pdf/about/fy2012-budgetrequest.pdf

and knowing that over 70% of funding for the smithsonian is from federal appropriations:
http://www.si.edu/giving/giv_faqs.html#faq01

the highest appropriating by far is for the National Museum of National History (asking for 48 million FY 2012), which if that is 70% of its operating cost then that museum has 68.5 million operating cost, assuming that it is not hemorrhaging money and meets operating budget every year.

BUT thats the only museum even close to 60 million; the next highest has 32 million appropriation (32/.7 = 46 million costs assuming private sources get the rest)

and those are big museums that have better things than [museum relatively speaking] garbage "here's a fireman's hat" and constantly update their collections and expand.

heck where is the money going, the 9/11 memorial & museum has 530 million in donations to get set up (according to unsourced wiki, am not googling further at the moment).

*edit* eh had a poor comparison, removing
the 9/11 memorial doesn't really have exhibits. It's just a location thing...

I guess property cost is quite high, I suppose it is reasonable. Can't find a good figure but only can compare to how much is takes to lease floor space from the city for the one world trade center (located on the 16 acre world trade center site), which 1/3 of the floor space of the building is 80 million per year (1 million square feet out of the 3 million sq ft of usable office space the building has). Although this is a very poor estimate, I guess looking at the opportunity cost of not having a museum there and just putting more office space the museum itself needs a big chunk to go into property.

 

[Cheetah]

Why would the property cost matter?

If this is supposed to be a memorial, the city should just expropriate the property (if it hasn't already?), with a reasonable compensation as necessary, and lease it for free to the non-profit organisation that will run the memorial. It's not like anyone is planning to take down this memorial in a decade and two to build new skyscrapers, is it?

Then a few million a year should be sufficient to pay for maintenance and upkeep, perhaps doing some research or updating the museum collection as necessary, supporting educational activities and paying the salaries of maybe two or three dozen people as necessary.

 

[BvBPL]

If this is supposed to be a memorial, the city should just expropriate the property (if it hasn't already?), with a reasonable compensation as necessary, and lease it for free to the non-profit organisation that will run the memorial. It's not like anyone is planning to take down this memorial in a decade and two to build new skyscrapers, is it?

For a governmental taking, reasonable compensation is based upon the best use the property could be put to. For downtown Manhattan, that's a skyscraper. Or two in this case. So property costs do matter, a lot.