The center will get mechanical work done on the elevators, have solar panels installed on the annex and see some maintenance in the exhibit galleries.
The projects will cost a total of approximately $450,000, including $360,000 for the elevators and $90,000 for the solar panels. Both are funded by the taxpayer-approved operating levy.
Kasey Eichensehr, senior curator of the Clark County Historical Society, said they decided to move forward and close for a month to catch up on some maintenance.
“It makes for a great chance to do some maintenance since not finding the time to do it with business as usual,” she said. “We have ongoing cleaning, but there is just more work to do, and we will have the time to do that while closed.”
The work includes replacing much of the mechanical components on the elevators.
The installation of solar panels on the annex will help reduce the cost of cooling the building in the summer.
The maintenance in the galleries includes fixing artifacts inside cases, cleaning artifacts and checking to see if others need to be fixed. The work also involves correcting a lack of interpretation and labels on some of the artifacts.
“We will take advantage of maintenance in the exhibit galleries. There are some minor issues that would take major disruption to fix,” Eichensehr said.
Although the monthly attendance varies, the center has averaged about 200 visitors in the month of January over the past five years. As for the year, there has been a little more 4,100 visitors through November of this year, even though the pandemic affected that amount.
“A surge of visitors when we reopen is possible ... hopefully our continuing social media and virtual programming during the period we’re closed will have attracted even more new visitors,” Eichensehr said.
The center intends to reopen in early February. This is the first time the center has closed entirely for a month, so officials are looking ahead to see what they can accomplish during that time beyond what they can normally do while open.
“I am very much looking forward to it. We love working with people, talking to the folks that come to us because they love history and what we do, but it’s nice to have some quiet, uninterrupted time to focus on our work. That’s what drew us to work in this line of work in the first place,” Eichensehr said.
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