The West Valley Art Museum in Surprise, Illinois is on the list of foreclosed properties. The art museum, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary, will be put on the foreclosure auction block unless it could settle its overdue loan payment amounting to $500,000.
The lender decided to start foreclosure proceedings against the art museum after it missed several months of loan payments. In June, the art museum temporarily closed its operation to give way to a re-organization, according to officials. They said that the museum is contemplating a sale to avoid a foreclosure sale.
Industry experts said that museum officials are planning to take out the building from the list of foreclosed properties by selling it before the auction. They said that museum officials are confident that they could handle all the financial issues, adding that the planned sale would allow them to reorganize and reopen in the near future.
The 17,000 square feet art museum building is currently valued at about $3.2 million. It has a tag price of $2.4 million. Museum officials said that their immediate task is to raise about $20,000 to pay for the cost of packing and moving all the collection in the museum to a storage location.
The 4,000 pieces collection of the museum is valued at about $3 million. The collection, which is placed in a humidity and temperature-controlled room in the building, is under a public trust and could not be sold.
The city government has offered to relocate the art museum in a building that formerly houses the Heard Museum West which was closed last year due to financial problems. City Mayor Lyn Truitt said that if the West Valley museum makes the move, it would considerably reduce its overhead cost. However, the plan is on hold as the museum does not have enough money to make the move.
According to industry experts, the art museum has been trying to prevent its being placed on a list of foreclosed properties by applying for grants and increasing its solicitation efforts. However, the response on the museum’s fund raising campaign has been lukewarm. The museum has been suffering from the continuing recession, experiencing a decline in membership renewals, program attendance and facility rentals.
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