Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame goes unnoticed by many

A little more than two years since its opening, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum in Natchitoches is evolving as a target tourism destination.

Doug Ireland, the executive director of the Hall of Fame Foundation who has been a key player in making the $23 million museum a reality, acknowledges the Hall's good fruit since it opened, but he sees the opportunity for more.

"We've got more than we ever dreamed we might have," he said, "yet we still have a lot of ground to cover. Two-thirds of our exhibition plan is installed. As for the rest, that's a budget issue. What we have is wonderful; what we could have is magnificent."

The museum is, for the most part, a showcase of Louisiana's rich sports history, covering a wide range of sports spanning more than 150 years. It is one of nine state museums and the only one north of I-10. Five are in New Orleans, including three (The Cabildo, The Presbytère and the 1850 House) in Jackson Square. The other French Quarter museum is The Old U.S. Mint, and the fifth New Orleans state museum is Madame John's Legacy.

Other state museums are the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge, the E.D. White Historic Site in Thibodaux and the Wedell-Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum in Patterson.

If it seems the hype the newest museum received leading to its opening has fallen short, consider what's missing.

"Mitch Landrieu talked 10 years ago (when he was the lieutenant governor) about how (at the then future museum) you would be able to run on the football field with Billy Cannon or dribble down court with Pete Maravich," Ireland said of a projected virtual reality experience room that hasn't materialized.

"The technology is out there to do those things," said Ireland, noting the Hall of Fame Foundation has been "tapping on doors" seeking roughly $3 million in private donations largely for technology-based exhibits as a way to "maximize our opportunities to tell the story of Louisiana sports." This fundraising goal is roughly the amount that has gone unfunded from the $6.7-million plan the state initially agreed to — before Hurricane Katrina — to pay for exhibits at the museum.

The state appropriates $542,000 annually for the operation and maintenance of the museum, said Marvin McGraw, the director of marketing and public relations for the Louisiana State Museum system, and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation kicks in an additional $10,000 each year.

Ireland said more potential visitors, especially from out of town and out of state, need to be made aware of the museum.

"It's astounding to me that the State of Louisiana has such an investment in a $23 million building and we can't resolve federal bureaucracy preventing signage on I-49 so we can promote it. Good, high-level people have tried and been rebuffed."

Among those "high-level" people is Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who, as the point man for the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, has nevertheless been a crucial figure for the museum.

"He has gone above and beyond the call of duty," said McGraw, "to insure that the museum has remained open in the face of unprecedented budget cuts, which closed other museums."

Dardenne said by "moving money from agency to agency," he "put a million dollars in the Office of Tourism to make sure we could keep the museum open because there was not enough from the general fund."

He said he wanted to help "because it's been a tremendous addition to the state museum system and we're such a sports-crazy state." At the induction ceremonies in late June, which attracted a record crowd of roughly 2,000, he gave lots of credit to the people of Natchitoches, from elected officials to volunteers, who "worked so hard to make this building a reality." He also praised LSHFF president Lisa Babin and the rest of the Hall of Fame Foundation for their fundraising help.

Unlike some sports halls in other states that focus mostly on football and on the sports, athletes and coaches from the major universities in the state, this museum has honored athletes, coaches and administrators from 14 different colleges, numerous high schools and professional teams.

For all the talk of a "sports-crazy state," there's potential for more awareness of the latest gem in the state museum system, Ireland said.

"We've got a wonderful tourism stream in Louisiana, and we're the best small town in the South (as recently selected in a USA Today readers' poll)," said Ireland. "Yet, we have a lot more visitors in Natchitoches (between 500,00 and 700,000 a year, according to the Natchitoches Covention and Visitors Bureau) than there are visitors to the museum. I contend we should get 5-10 percent of that number.

"It all gets back to awareness," he went on. "My contention is there are people standing at the Church Street Bridge downtown that have no idea that 300 feet away is a world-class museum."

Museum director Jennae Biddiscomb, hailing the museum's average of more than 15,000 visitors a year and its "many, many programs" at the museum over the last two years, disputes that.

"We are well marketed in the city," she said, citing help from the Visitors Center, the Chamber of Commerce and the programs at the museum. "Now, when they have the Fall Tour of Homes and the Christmas Tour of Homes, we've gotten on that, too."

Ireland, a former sports writer and longtime sports information director at Northwestern State, noted the dearth of people at the museum on a recent weekend, when there were a lot of visitors in town. He said youth teams like those that were in town that weekend for a baseball tournament, with parents and coaches, are an example of untapped potential visitors.

"There needs to be more engagement with these groups, especially those involved with sports, to get them to come to the museum," said Ireland.

Biddiscombe has a skeleton museum staff, not including security and maintenance personnel, but she and Ireland do agree that a new cooperative endeavor agreement with Northwestern State will be good for the museum as students pursuing careers such as marketing and sports administration "get involved," said Ireland, "in promoting, marketing and the visitor experience at the museum."

The building, named No. 1 on Azure Magazine's 2013 Top 10 Architecture Projects list from around the world, was designed by architect Victor F. "Trey" Trahan III, and the 28,000-square foot box-shaped building overlooks the public square on Front Street in downtown Natchitoches. While the cutting-edge exterior is in marked contrast with the architecture of other downtown buildings in the oldest permanent settlement in Louisiana, the interior design is in synch with the local geography and culture.

"We used artistic liberties in shaping the interior of the box," Trahan said shortly after the building opened, referring to its flowing and curving aisles and stairways to reflect the local terrain with its rivers, including the nearby Cane River Lake.

More than 1,100 different shapes of cast stone, about five inches thick, make up the Great Hall's flowing surfaces. Some weigh as much as five tons and they were set by hand into a steel frame in the museum's walls. The narrow, recessed lighting panels, placed in seemingly unorganized arrangement "represent aggregate in rivers that flow — they have unique patterns," said Trahan.

Alexandria's Greg O'Quin, a Hall of Fame Foundation board member, calls the museum "a Guggenheim on the Cane."

Dr. L.J. Mayeux, the chairman of the Hall of Fame Foundation, said the newest museum "is a different type museum than the other state museums and attracts different crowds."

A native of Marksville, Mayeux is a former national president and chairman of the board for Ducks Unlimited, as well as being an inductee in the Louisiana Sports Hall as the 2012 recipient of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award. It's probably no surprise that among his favorite exhibits are the outdoors exhibit and the exhibit featuring outdoors legend Grits Gresham on the second floor.

One of the popular exhibits for children, according to exit surveys, is a modified 1956 Thunderbird built in a New Orleans garage that set land and speed records in the early 1960s at the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, hitting a speed of over 240 mph.

The interactive databases with biographical information, quotes and statistics on the inductees are also popular, said Biddiscombe, as is the Clementine Hunter art display in the history section upstairs.

Another popular feature is a wall with running film of Louisiana sports highlights over the years such as Tom Dempsey's record, game-winning field goal for the New Orleans Saints against the Detroit Lions in 1970. Artifacts at the museum, collected over decades, date as far back as the 1800s, and there's not enough space to showcase them all at one time.

"Exhibits for the new inductees change every year," said Biddiscombe, "and we have a sports gallery that changes out every year." She said she's also looking forward to housing the Smithsonian Museum exhibit "Hometown Teams" for six weeks in 2016.

The pro football exhibit features, among other things, the size 16 EEE cleat of Ernie Ladd of the San Diego Chargers, who was an All-American at Grambling. Another gem is the Brooklyn Dodgers football team's contract from 1934 for former Centenary great Paul Geisler for $150 a game, which he turned down.

Ireland, who chairs the 35-member Louisiana Sports Writers Association committee that meets annually to select eight inductees each year, said the mere existence of the museum has triggered more awareness for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. "That's borne out," he said, "in the increased number of nominees we are receiving from a variety of sources, including Jack and John Q. Public.

"Every nominee we get, we're excited to hear about," he said, looking ahead to the committee's annual meeting on Aug. 23. "We are now considering more candidates than ever before, but we'll continue to elect only the elite. We're not going to elect 15-20 like some other states do."

A list of all the nominees are screened by a subcommittee in mid-July, "and only those deemed to have the credentials worthy for induction move forward on the ballot."

The Hall is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., and Sundays, 1-5 p.m. School and group tours may request early arrival. It is closed Mondays and state holidays. The cost is $5 for adults, $4 for students, seniors and military; and free for children 12 and under.

Bob Tompkins is the storyteller for The Town Talk. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook.