SWIF, Gallup discuss future of Cultural Center

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Gallup officials are hoping to know within the next few weeks what the future holds for the Gallup Cultural Center.

The center, once the home of the Greyhound Bus line, has been occupied for the past several years by the Southwest Indian Foundation, which has used it for a gallery and an informal visitor’s bureau for tourists. Part of the center has also been leased out as a small restaurant.

But for the past several months, talks have been going on between the city and officials for SWIF about the organization’s continued use of the building.

City Manager Gerald Herrera told members of the City Council last week that the time for talking is over and his office has asked SWIF to make a decision on whether they want to purchase the center, continue as a lessee or move out.

The reason for the urgency has to with the fact that the state has provided the city and the Gallup Chamber of Commerce with four grants totaling $580,000 and Bill Lee, the chamber’s director, said there are fears that the state may take the grants back if there is no progress and the grants remain in limbo.

The four grants deal with plans that have been in the works for several years to build a resource center and a new building for the chamber.

But all of this is tied in with what happens to SWIF and the cultural center.

If SWIF continues to occupy the center or purchases it, the plans are to build a resource center and chamber building just to the west of the cultural center. If that happens, the chamber would have to come up with another $1.5 million to construct the building and fix the parking lot.

Lee pointed out that there is also the possibility of the chamber moving into the cultural center if SWIF continues to occupy it. Bill McCarthy, executive director of SWIF, said there have been discussions about the possibility of the chamber moving into the western portion of the first floor and taking over the portion that SWIF now uses as a visitor’s center.

If SWIF decides that it no longer wants to use the building and moves out, the city is talking about using the funds to move the chamber into the second floor of the center and remodeling it with the Gallup Convention and Visitor’s Bureau using the first floor.

McCarthy, in a letter to Pederson sent on Tuesday, pointed out that the city has no right to cancel SWIF’s lease to the building.

Under the original lease, approved unanimously by the city council in 2003, SWIF was given a five-year lease on the building with the option of three additional five year extensions, provided that SWIF does not go into default and gives the city written notification that it was exercising its option to extend the lease, which McCarthy said it has done.

“Empathically, we hold the position that the present lease is legal and fully binding,” he wrote. “It was certainly the understanding of the two parties at the time we were entering into a 20-year lease agreement.”

City officials have questions about whether SWIF is in default of the agreement because it has not created, as provided in the original lease, a Code Talker Museum for the space that was formerly occupied by the Greyhound Bus line. But McCarthy contends in his letter that SWIF is continuing to develop an exhibit that “is a full sensory immersion experience into the life and the world of the Navajo Code Talkers.”

He also pointed out that the designers of that exhibit were supposed to appear before the council on Dec. 23 but had to cancel because of bad weather.

“We have our position. You have yours,” wrote McCarthy. “It might be a really good thing for us to work together..”