$olving a Problem by Admi$$ion

Reality to Earth . . . No this isn't about Weiner and his True Confessions. It's all about the money.

For $25 there are a lot of things you can still do in this world, many of them fun, or filling, or just plain necessary. Looking to add to the list are the people who are looking to take the area below the World Trade Center memorial and turn it into a museum about the site, the legacy of 9/11 and, hopefully, who we are as a people in regards to how that event changed the face of our world.

And now for the numbers . . . All of this is to come at the price of $25.00 per person per visit (Suggested) or $20.00 (Mandatory).

The person who brought this costly ($60 Million dollars annual operating costs) little brain child to the fore compared the museum to MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art, if you're not familiar) or The American Museum of Natural History. Both of these cultural giants charge nominal admission, but to be fair, they also have membership plans which allow an individual annual unlimited access to their sites for as low as $75 and $70 respectively. (Lower per person if you take a family plan, Higher if you want all of the perks of becoming a friend or donor.)

There are other considerations to be made, especially if they wish to compare their orange with two of the giants of The Big Apple. I find it unusual, first of all, to have the WTC museum below ground, when the very essence of the site was always its presence for New Yorkers and visitors above the ground, reaching into the sky. The overall space they would also need to hold as much in display on the subterranean site as either of the aforementioned museums hold would require them to dig down far enough to cut through the site’s ‘bathtub’* and practically hit magma. (It’s a bit of poetic license, friends. This is a figurative gag, not a literal estimation.) Also, these two museums are standalone organizations, and don't have a 1700 foot tall real estate beast and other buildings going up as part of the same site, all of which are fully capable of assisting in generating the revenue required to open their doors.

To charge admission of some sort for a museum, suggested or not, is not an unreasonable request, but the price ‘suggested’ seems out of touch with the fiscal reality of its potential visitors. To visit the memorial will be free. I find it hard to believe the museum space beneath will be getting as much use or as many visitors as it would take to keep it open. That would be 2.4 million people a year (suggested) or 3 million people a year (mandatory) . . . An average of over 8200 visitors per day. It’s the paradox of pricing, but the prices which will help increase attendance are going to have to be lower; low enough to bring the most possible visitors.

The bottom line to this story of bottom lines would be to take a good hard look at how the people putting this museum together are making their decisions. It would be a damned shame to get something this important wrong.

* Subterranean concrete wall sealing off the site within the original landfill.