San Benito museums tweak lease agreements

SAN BENITO — The city’s setting the stage for its new cultural district.

Now, documents are on the table to help decide the future the city’s three museums.

The city has presented the San Benito History Museum and the Texas Conjunto Hall of Fame and Museum with proposed lease agreements for the new $1.7 million San Benito Cultural Heritage Center, whose construction was completed earlier this year.

“It gives us the legal right to be there,” Wayne Powell, president of the History Museum, said of the documents that would allow the two museums to move into the new 7,000-square-foot building.

Meanwhile, the Freddy Fender Museum has provided the city with a lease agreement for the Community Center, where it has been located since it opened 10 years ago.

Last week, City Manager Manuel De La Rosa said Vangie Huerta, Fender’s widow who owns legal rights to his name, wants the museum to remain at that site, located next to the new building.

“The city staff is in the process of negotiating agreements with various non-profit groups to display their exhibits and also negotiating lease agreements to house their non-profit business operations in city-owned facilities,” De La Rosa stated.

De La Rosa said the city will promote the Cultural Heritage Center and the Community Center as part of its new cultural district located with San Benito Plaza.

The proposed leases, which do not charge rent, do not include an inception date, Powell said.

“We don’t have any idea when the move-in date will be,” Powell said. “The city wants a long-term lease. We’re still working on some details.”

Meanwhile, the two museums continue trying to raise about $200,000 to fund the 7,000-square-foot museum’s interior, including their display areas.

“We’ve got to raise a lot of money to move in,” Powell said. “We’ve got to pay for a lot of displays.”

So far, the two museums and the city have raised about $65,000, said Tootie Madden, the History Museum’s vice president.

Now, the museums are awaiting Southwest Museum Services, a Houston-based consulting firm, to present the new building’s floor plan.

The blueprints will help the museums plan their exhibit areas, said Rey Avila, founder of the Conjunto Hall of Fame.

Like Powell, Avila also hoped the Fender museum would move into the new building.

For 10 years, Fender’s legacy and hit songs have helped draw fans to the 1,000-square-foot space the three museums share in the Community Building.

“We’ve all been together,” Avila said. “We just have to accept what Mrs. Huerta wants if she wants to go another direction.”

Last year, the city negotiated with Huerta over the Fender museum’s future.

Earlier this year, Huerta said she had requested the city enter into an agreement in which the city would prominently display Fender’s name outside the new museum while compensating her for the use of his artifacts.

De La Rosa said the new museum is also expected to include Fender exhibits.