Offices of FL Boating Museum relocate in Geneva

The Finger Lakes Boating Museum has relocated its office from the Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce building to the former Geneva Recreation Dept. office on South Exchange Street adjacent to the city ice rink.The office move is necessary because the Chamber building will be demolished starting this fall so that the new Boating Museum can be built on the site.Boating Museum President Vince Scalise invited interested people to come to the office and view drawings of the future Boating Museum. The office is used primarily by the executive director of the Museum, Dr. David Danahar, and Bobbi Clifford, assistant to the executive director. The address is South Exchange Street and the phone number is 315-759-0929.Last month, the Boating Museum staged its largest ever Boating Festival on the lakefront grounds. Many of the Museum’s wooden rowboats, power boats, and canoes built in the Finger Lakes were on display.The Boating Museum reached agreement with the City of Geneva in the fall of 2009 to establish a permanent home on the Geneva waterfront in association with a Visitor Center. The building, which will be located on the current Geneva Chamber of Commerce site, is being enabled by a $2-million grant provided to the city by state Sen. Michael Nozzolio and a $450,000 grant to the city through the Regional Economic Development Council initiative. Construction will start this September.The Boating Museum has assembled a collection of more than 100 wooden boats built in the Finger Lakes over the past 100 years, as well as numerous related artifacts and extensive reference material. Portions of the collection will be displayed on a rotating basis within the new facility, but President Vince Scalise emphasized that there will be a lot more to the museum than viewing boats because education, restoration and preservation are the key elements of the museum’s mission.Also featured will be boat rides on Seneca Lake, active on-water programs including sailing and small boat handling, interactive workshops and displays to engage visitors in the design and construction of boats and boating history materials and programs. The boating museum is a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation and was chartered by the New York State Department of Education in 1997 to “research, document, preserve and share the boating history of the Finger Lakes region.”