Selling EMP to tourists will be next big project

It was a great moment to be from Cleveland. Labor Day, 1995, and the river wasn't burning, the lake was only a little toxic and Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, the Kinks and Bob Dylan were rocking the house. After more than a decade in the making, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the spiritual predecessor to Seattle's Experience Music Project (EMP), had turned Cleveland from a punch line to a destination.

A headline in the Plain Dealer newspaper said it all: "They Like Us! They Really Like Us!" One million people visited the Hall that first year. But it never reached that peak again.

In fact, Cleveland has grown a little tired of it. Last year, attendance sank to just over a half-million people. The same paper that reveled in its opening recently called it the "rock and roll mausoleum."

As the Hall scrambles to draw more people in, the Experience Music Project is about to open its doors to the public with a huge opening weekend on June 23. It's debut comes eight years after local billionaire Paul Allen first said he would build a museum to honor his hero, Jimi Hendrix. The concept has grown to encompass the entire history of rock music. Costing $240 million, financed almost entirely by Allen, it boasts over 100,000 artifacts, interactive displays and a theme-park style, motion platform ride, all wrapped in a right-angle-free, multicolored building at the foot of the Space Needle.

With initial-year attendance predicted to be at least 800,000 people, EMP's officials insist their museum will not suffer a fate similar to Cleveland's.

EMP faces many challenges. Its image must remain current and exciting, to lure all those tourists each year. The day it becomes known as the Excessive Monotony Project, there's trouble. Just as important is to be embraced by Seattle. Without the region's support, a dip in the economy could throw EMP into decline.

The weekend of June 23, with scores of performers spread over three days, is a guaranteed smash. The first year should be easy. After that, things get hard.

"Can we constantly recreate the fervor we'll have around our opening?" said Jim Weyermann, EMP's director of external affairs. "No. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But if we continue to grow and mature and deliver what we promised we have the ability to grow our audience rather than lose it."

Close your eyes and try to picture Seattle. What do you see? Maybe the Olympics or the Monorail; for some the Opera House or Alki Beach. Tourists looking for a vacation see the Big Three: Space Needle, Mount Rainier, Pike Place Market. Where does EMP fit into this?

B.J. Stokey, who markets international tourism for the Port of Seattle, thinks the museum will help create a whole new market for the city. Of the 8 million overnight visitors to King County last year, only 500,000 came from overseas. As the Asian economies went into recession the last few years, this core group stopped coming.

Now Seattle is focusing more energy on European travelers. Britons and Germans are priorities. Seattle is now a third-tier destination, Stokey said, coming after New York, Florida and Los Angeles. EMP could change that.

"We've been looking for a good hook and maybe EMP could be that," she said. "We already had a ton of interest from British journalists. And we know the Germans love technology. They love Jimi Hendrix, too."

More than grunge rock

But to really capitalize on EMP, Seattle has to brighten its image. Aside from grunge rock and maybe theater, the city isn't known internationally for its culture. The Port is pushing EMP hard overseas, hoping to broaden this view.

But how do you market this thing? It looks like the Space Needle dropped its clothes in a pile. It refuses to call itself a museum. It's a "project," a cross between a gallery, a fun park and a disco.

Cameron Green, who as the co-owner of Hadley-Green has created advertisements for everything from Seattle Center to the Dairy Farmers of Washington, said its very oddness is what makes it marketable. Were he creating a commercial to sell Seattle to the world, he said, he'd put EMP out front.

"I don't think it encapsulates Seattle," he said, "but it shows a side of the city that is more creative and playful. There is nothing else like this anywhere."

But will creative and playful pack in the crowds? Even in its current, troubled state, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is still a major engine for Cleveland, pumping tens of millions of dollars into the economy. Along with Jacobs Field, new home to the Cleveland Indians, the Hall has helped to nearly double tourism in five years.

Rock museum a Cleveland icon

The building itself is part of the appeal. Designed by world-famous architect I.M. Pei, it's become a Cleveland icon. Walk along the shore of Lake Erie and you can buy postcards with its picture. With its glass pyramids and open space, it impresses without frightening. Will Frank Gehry's Seattle building become so beloved?

Gehry is so hot today that it seems like every city must have one of his creations. After Bilbao, Spain, an industrial city which Gehry transformed with his Guggenheim Museum, every new structure is an event. Weyermann is confident the building's pedigree alone will bring thousands every year to EMP.

`They might get weirded out'

But for the thousands who mob Pike Place Market every day, EMP has made little impact.

It is here, among the market's crowded stalls, that the average tourists make their feelings known. Over all kinds of things, from $10 dish towels and aprons to $300 matted photographs, the Big Three still reign. There is not a single image of EMP to buy.

The reason, said people who sell Seattle images, is that no one wants to take EMP home with them just yet. Tom Graham sells costumes next to his mother, who sells aprons imprinted with the Space Needle. He said most people he talks to find EMP "interesting" - the ultimate insult.

Austin McDougall, who has been the market agent for Gary Davis Photography for two years, said he's found tourists' taste to be fairly basic: They want the Needle and the Mountain. Maybe a ferry.

"If we get EMP in one of our pictures, they might get weirded out," he said, pointing to a cityscape in which the museum appears to be hiding. "We try to block it out with some trees."

Seattle's family room

When Virginia Anderson took the job as executive director of Seattle Center in 1988, the home of the 1962 World's Fair had grown tired. It was on the verge of bankruptcy; attendance had plummeted. Disney wanted to come in, put a big fence around the place and charge admission.

Through a hundred community meetings, a plan was formed to rescue the center. The idea was to be the one place where everyone could hang out. Two goals were articulated: to increase family programming and artistic expression.

Nearly $400 million has been invested in improvements the past eight years. Now, with EMP set to open, Anderson looks at the job as nearly complete.

"This place is about mixing everybody together," she said. "I look at EMP and think how it makes this a more vibrant family room. It brings a part of our family that we're not attracting right now."

The family metaphor might feel a little odd, but for Seattle Center, it's an apt one. In a recent survey, 82 percent of city residents said they go to the center at least 9 times each year. For EMP to be successful, it must be accepted by Seattle.

"This is why we chose the Seattle Center," Weyermann said. "It ties us from the very beginning to Seattle."

Our long, screaming fights

We'll see about that. People in the region have not quite figured this thing out. Some love it; some hate it. It's an obsession, really. And Walt Crowley saw it coming.

Crowley is an eminent Northwest historian. Ask him about where the fight about EMP fits into Seattle history and he chuckles. "It happens every time we do something new," he said, ticking off some examples, from the original Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park to the old aquarium, from the city's purchase of Woodland Park in 1899, to the new library - still in the planning stage.

"I could go on," Crowley said. "We just love to have long screaming fights over these things."

There was never a fight, however, about our biggest icon, the Space Needle. It was a major ordeal to build, but it had widespread support most of the way. Maybe this is what helped it to quickly become a Seattle symbol. Rod Kirkwood, who helped design the tower with John Graham, remembers crowds with binoculars watching it inch up into the sky.

Kirkwood, who at age 80 is two years into retirement, said the team designing the Space Needle didn't know it would become beloved. But he believes its popularity comes not so much from its shape, but its accessibility.

"We built it with public participation in mind," he said. "It was a place for people to go."

We have the technology

Make it accessible. Make it a place people want to go. The lesson is one Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is learning as it tries to increase attendance.

Every museum today wants to connect with its community. Few museums are funded by an individual with unlimited resources anymore. Paul Allen is an exception in this world, a throwback, in some ways, to a different age. Without widespread support, institutions today wither.

Dennis Barrie, the original director of the Hall (he left in 1996), sees what happened to the Hall as a cautionary tale for EMP. After a successful first year, he said, the administration didn't keep the momentum going. Opportunities to keep its name in view were missed, community outreach was not what it should have been. After a while, he said, it became easy for people, particularly in Cleveland, to overlook it.

"You're yesterday's news after a while," Barrie said.

Weyermann and EMP emphasize that this won't happen here. Superior technology, they said, will keep people coming. As will a continuous stream of events, the building's design, and new exhibits. EMP will follow the plans of successful museums, Weyermann said, by investing heavily in programs for children.

"You have to develop your next audience," he said. "There are always new first-graders every year."

Not everyone shares Weyermann's confidence with EMP. For some, the $240 million price tag for the whole thing (building, collection and technology) is excessive.

Alex Steffen, president of Allied Arts, the activist group that helped save Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square, said EMP is an odd statement for Allen to make about his support of the arts. At a time when development is driving artists out and noise ordinances are silencing many musicians, he can't understand why Allen chose EMP as his vehicle.

Bold buildings on the way

The debate rages. John Rahaim, executive director of the city's Seattle Design Commission, is an EMP fan. But he is trying to draw attention to the background buildings, the ones that define a city to those who live in it. He sees EMP as part of a worldwide trend for cities to put up bold civic structures. For decades, cities built mainly uninspired structures, boxes with windows.

"We just need to keep our eye on what we're building throughout the city," he said. "And we need to make sure we don't try to make every building bold."

There are a lot of bold buildings coming: Rem Koolhaas' library, the Bellevue Art Museum, the proposed new aquarium, the proposed new City Hall, the Opera House renovation. But those who must now run EMP can take some comfort from the fact that maybe the city is becoming a place where original architecture can thrive.

Donald Carlson, president of the American Institute of Architects Seattle chapter, sees a future in which EMP will stand out, but also blend in. His opinion will be fought all the way, which is part of the fun: It's ugly. It's great. It's stupid. It's genius.

It's who we are now.

"I think we're just starting to grow up," Carlson. "It won't be easy. We may not like all that comes with it. But at least it won't be boring."

John Zebrowski's phone message number is 206-464-8292. His e-mail address is jzebrowski@seattletimes.com.