Surf City Will Keep Museum Rent-Free

The International Surfing Museum, a Huntington Beach institution that celebrates the sport and its devotees, has survived an attempt by the city to charge it rent, a move that would have forced it to close, museum officials said this week. City Councilman Ralph H. Bauer had proposed that the museum pay at least half of the average rent for retail space in the downtown area.

The proposal was part of a package of recommendations Bauer urged the council to consider as a way to help provide funding for the Shipley Nature Center and the Police Department’s DARE anti-drug program and crime lab, all of which are threatened by the city’s budget shortfall.

But the council rejected the proposal at its meeting this week.

“The question becomes is it more important to subsidize the surf museum or have a crime lab,” Bauer said. “I don’t say it’s [the museum] not important, I’m just saying the city shouldn’t be carrying the whole burden.”

The museum, housed in a 2,000-square-foot structure on Olive Street, makes a token payment of $1 a year to the city, which owns the building. Rent for retail space downtown averages about $3 a month per square foot. At those rates, the museum would have to pay the city about $3,000 a month.

“We wouldn’t be able to exist without the city giving us that space for a $1 a year,” museum board chairman Bob Frederickson said.

The museum, which attracts about 10,000 visitors a year, depends on corporate and institutional donations, proceeds from its gift shop and the donations from visitors.

But that money “pretty much goes to the operation of the museum,” Frederickson said.

Natalie Kotsch, who founded the museum more than 20 years ago, said there are plans for a new surfing museum as part of the Pacific City development, to be built on 31 acres between 1st Street and the Hyatt Regency. “We eventually will move,” she said, “but it’s not in the near future.”

The Olive Street building is on a list of city-owned properties that could eventually be put up for sale, Bauer said.

The museum is concluding its sponsorship of a monthlong celebration of surfing, including the dedication of a postage stamp honoring surfing legend Duke Paoa Kahanamoku.