Big vision, big troubles at Fresno's Met

Fresno Metropolitan Museum started a bold canvas for a Valley cultural center, but finances darken the picture.

Posted at 02:30 AM on Sunday, Mar. 22, 2009

Community leaders dreamed for years of turning Fresno Metropolitan Museum into the crown jewel of a booming arts and entertainment district downtown.

They envisioned turning an entire city block into a statewide cultural magnet by remodeling the museum's historic home and constructing a breathtaking addition designed by a renowned architect.

Today, that dream is all but forgotten as financial problems threaten to overwhelm the museum. Interviews and documents show that the expansion plans were too ambitious, the renovation expenses too high, the oversight either nonexistent or ineffective.

The Met can't figure out how to repay a $15 million bank loan coming due in about two months, faces mounting legal problems from unpaid creditors, and is awash in red ink. The city, which guaranteed the bank loan, is looking for ways to help, and the museum has successfully cut expenses in recent weeks. But over the last four months, The Met still spent nearly $2 for every dollar it took in.

In the end, The Met's calamity of finances and leadership may permanently change the way Fresno delivers culture to the Valley.

"I don't know what they got out of this except a lot of heartache," says well-known Fresno architect Bill Patnaude, who, as one of several construction managers for the renovation, tried to bring order out of the chaos.

Paul Gottlieb, president of the museum's board and a trustee for much of the past decade, says trustees tried to walk a fine line: keep a firm hand on expenses, yet avoid micro-managing.

Gottlieb says it's not the trustees' fault that they were overwhelmed by a "perfect storm" of economic woe: cost overruns impossible to anticipate, then a severe national recession that dried up donations and grants.

"I don't think we're in bad shape," Gottlieb says. "We have a financial challenge. And this board or another board will figure out a way to work through it."

'Just heartbreaking'

The Met's problems developed under the leadership of former executive director Kathleen Monaghan, who was hired in 1999 to create and implement a plan to take the museum into the 21st century.

She and Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan unveiled the dream to considerable fanfare in December 2004: a block-sized campus anchored by a huge new building that would be connected to the remodeled former Bee building.

Met officials are now trying to distance themselves from the big dream.

"That is a beautiful conceptual building," Gottlieb says. "But I think everybody understands that that's not necessarily what ultimately would be built."

Monaghan retired last year and was expected to become a volunteer curator. But instead she has returned to her home and husband in New York City. She says she was merely the agent of change that The Met's trustees sought when they hired her.

"They're in the driver's seat," Monaghan says. "The buck stops with them. If they were ever disappointed or unhappy, they didn't communicate it to me."

She echoes Patnaude: "What has happened is just heartbreaking."

The most pressing source of heartache is the $15 million loan. It was granted by United Security Bank nearly two years ago to complete renovation of The Met's home, an 87-year-old building in Fresno's Uptown area that once housed The Fresno Bee. Museum officials have tried for months to refinance the loan, but to no avail.

After several extensions, the loan is due in June, and The Met doesn't have the money. That means the cash-strapped city of Fresno, which guaranteed the loan, could be forced to repay it.