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≡ DIFFICULT FIRST FIVE ≡
“We have this amazing asset, and we know we’re telling amazing stories for Team USA.
“We know too many people in our region and beyond don’t know we’re here. To do right by this community – to do right by Olympic City, USA – we’re making sure we’re shouting it from the rooftops.”
That’s Marisa Wigglesworth, the chief executive for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, which opened on 30 July 2020 and will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Wednesday. The Museum’s situation was reviewed in detail by the hometown Colorado Springs Gazette on Sunday, noting that attendance has been a continuing challenge.
The 60,000 sq. ft. facility, with its distinctive aluminum skin, broke ground on June 2017 and opened three years later, with projections of as many as 350,000 attendees per year. Unfortunately, its completion also coincided with the devastating Covid-19 pandemic.
The USOPM provided the key statistics for the facility, which is completely separate and independent of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, also headquartered in Colorado Springs:
Attendance:
● 2021: 106,767
● 2022: 77,205
● 2023: 69,929
● 2024: 83,582
● 2025: 42,901 through 13 July
Revenues:
● 2021: $14,923,458
● 2022: $10,754,077
● 2023: $7,292,709
● 2024: $6,430,781
● 2025: $3,176,865 through 13 June
The building cost rose from an initial estimate of $65 million to about $91 million, and was financed with a state grant of $26.2 million, but mostly with private funds and a Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority bond issue.
A 2023 review noted that the Museum operated at a loss in 2020 and 2021, but turned a surplus in 2022; the Gazette story noted:
“In 2023, the museum operated at a loss of about $1.3 million. Its expenses in 2024 totaled about $6 million, not including nearly $3 million in depreciation. Expenses for 2025 are about $2.9 million, as of June 30.”
The Museum has undergone some management turbulence as Chris Liedel, named as its first chief executive in 2018 and who oversaw the opening, was dismissed in early June 2021. Board member Phil Lane served as acting chief, then left for health reasons and Board member Pam Shockley-Zalabak was installed until Wigglesworth was hired in June 2023 from the Buffalo Museum of Science and the 264-acre Tifft Nature Preserve in New York State.
Now in the job for two years, Wigglesworth said the marketing effort is being stepped up and adjustments for the future are being made:
“Five years in, we’re learning a lot. What is clear to us is that 350,000 visitors a year was not an accurate projection for this museum, in this community, in this tourism destination. We are in the process of re-establishing what is going to be our attendance model.”
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