New home for old planes: flight museum plans unveiled

HOUSTON-- A bright yellow biplane buzzing alongside a hangar at Ellington Airport carried Houston's mayor to a memorable photo op arrival as officials unveiled plans for a new Lone Star Flight Museum.

The $35-million museum will turn Ellington, the home of the annual Wings Over Houston Air Show, into a year-round attraction for aviation buffs. Space Center Houston sits a short drive away, so the two museums could work together as a draw for tourists interested in air and space travel.

"It's a very cool looking facility," said Scott Rozzell, the museum's vice chairman. I think that our community is going to be very proud to have this facility here."

But the unveiling of the new facility is bittersweet for the old airplane enthusiasts who've kept the current museum running in Galveston for almost twenty years. The bigger and more elaborate Ellington Field building will replace the vintage buildings at Scholes Field that have been the aircraft museum's longtime home.

"It is a bittersweet event for us," said Larry Gregory, the museum's president. "Galveston has been a fantastic home for us."

Amid a complex of tourist attractions on Galveston Island, within walking distance of Moody Gardens and the Schlitterbahn water park, sit a couple of old hangars housing a collection of historic aircraft. World War II era bombers like the classic B-17G Flying Fortress share the space with more modern planes like the gleaming silver DC-3 passenger aircraft.

But as the Lone Star Flight Museum's directors learned the hard way, Galveston can be a dangerous place during a hurricane. On a stormy night in September 2008, one of the hangar walls collapsed and floodwaters from Galveston Bay rushed into the building.

"We had open waves coming through here," said Gregory, as he stood in the middle of the hangar. "And where we're standing right now was basically a spaghetti bowl of airplanes and cars and everything else and debris from outside. We had trees, piers, roofs, a lot of equipment from around the airport that washed in here. Appliances, you name it, it was in here."

Hurricane Ike caused an estimated $18-million worth of damage to the museum and sealed the fate of the tourist attraction at Scholes Field. The pilots who ran the museum shared a deep affection for Galveston, but they decided they had little choice but to move the aircraft inland.

"The board felt it was important to protect the collection and move it to a safer place," said Rozzell. "So that's why we're coming to Ellington Airport."

Aviation buffs who've toured the hangars in Galveston will discover a very different experience when the new museum opens. The aircraft will become the central attraction for a 130,000 square foot facility at Ellington Airport that will include interactive exhibits on science, technology and aviation history.

"We hope to use the aircraft as attention grabbers to inspire our community, and particularly the young people in our community, to look into the benefits of science, technology and engineering education," Rozzell said.

An ersatz "flight academy" will teach visitors the fundamentals of flight and aircraft design, while an Aviation Learning Center modeled after a similar facility in Seattle will give students between the fifth and twelfth grades a chance to plan and make simulated flights.

"There are a few things that really connect with children really early on," said Bonnie Dunbar, a retired astronaut and veteran of five space shuttle missions who's co-chairing the museum's education committee. "One of them is dinosaurs, the other one is flight and space. And if we can connect them with the inspiration of flight and show how math and science is involved in that, we hope that we can keep them in it."

Construction on the new museum is scheduled to begin early next year. It's expected to open in late 2016, in time for the 2017 Super Bowl at NRG Stadium.