Board recommends $30M allocation for art museum, $9.3M for parks and trails 

The Springfield Art Museum will receive $30 million over the next two years if Springfield City Council approves a recommendation of its Citizens’ Advisory Board. 

The CAB – the council-appointed body tasked with making recommendations to spend a half-cent, 10-year Spring Forward SGF sales tax – unanimously voted yesterday to recommend $15 million in funding for fiscal year 2027 and another $15 for fiscal 2028 for the art museum.  

Additionally, city parks and trails, administered by the Springfield-Greene County Park Board and Ozarks Greenways Inc., are in line to receive $9.3 million for six projects in fiscal year 2027, following a unanimous CAB vote and pending council approval. 

The half-cent Spring Forward SGF sales tax, part of a three-quarter-cent tax approved by voters in November 2024, generates just over $30 million annually over a 10-year period for projects aligned with the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan. The other quarter cent of the tax, which is permanent, funds public safety and a police and fire pension plan. 

Recommendations from CAB have to be approved by council, which typically has a two-meeting process, first with a public hearing and then with a vote at a subsequent meeting. 

At yesterday’s CAB meeting, art museum Executive Director Nick Nelson outlined what he called a value-engineered version of the museum’s Phase 2 plan. That plan anticipates the $30 million tax allocation, coupled with $3.8 million in private donations for a $33.8 million project. 

The plan is a reduction from what Nelson called the ideal plan, a $37.2 million project that was based on a slightly higher allocation from CAB, at $18.4 million, in fiscal 2028. 

Nelson explained that the lower funding level would remove 3,400 square feet from the design. Some of the revision would be to an area that was envisioned to include three classrooms and a community room, with the value-engineered plan eliminating some of the classroom space.  

CAB member Clif Smart, former president of Missouri State University, was in favor of the board recommending the lower level of funding. 

“You’ve got six months to go find one person to give you $4 million, and it absolutely can be done,” he said. “It’s not 100% – it’s 85% that absolutely someone is going to want to have their name on an amazing, transformational building.” 

Smart said he doesn’t believe the CAB is deciding the value-engineered design over the “good” design. 

“We’re going to find a family to fund that difference and close the gap, and save $4 million for us to allocate to something else,” he said. 

Board member Rusty Worley clarified that the shortfall was only $3.4 million. 

Deputy City Manager Collin Quigley encouraged the CAB to look at the two-year funding plan for the art museum, since doing so would ensure funds were there for the Phase 2 work. Council would be able to budget only the fiscal 2027 allocation, but the board’s intention would be clear for the project as a whole. 

“We’ll need to work through to finance the process to do the budget and make sure the construction funds are there when the project begins,” he said. 

The Springfield Art Museum sent an email to supporters following the meeting to announce the recommendation of funding. The announcement called the proposed allocation a major museum milestone. 

“We’re one step closer to expanded galleries, improved accessibility and new spaces designed to serve our community for generations – on track for a 2028 reopening,” the announcement said. 

That year, which will mark the Springfield Art Museum’s centennial, has long been the target for completion of the renovation. 

In Nelson’s presentation, he outlined the economic impact of the museum renovation, with total annual attendance projected to increase by 122% to 100,000 from 45,000 upon reopening in 2028. 

The total annual economic impact projected tops $7.1 million in 2028, up 77% from estimates of $4 million in 2024. 

“At $7.1 million in annual economic impact, the art museum will repay public and private investment in the project in just over 10 years,” Nelson pointed out in a slide presentation. 

The museum has expended $41.8 million in state and federal funds, private donations and its own funds on Phase I improvements and ground and parking lot work. 

Park and trail funding
The $9.3 million allocation recommendation from CAB for parks and trails breaks down as follows: 

• $3.6 millionfor Meador Park to add more pickleball courts 
• $1.8 million to extend the Chadwick Flyer Trail from Kissick Avenue to the Trail of Honor
• Nearly $1.4 million for Lafayette Park master plan implementation 
• $1 million for theUnGapthe Map priority, to include design, planning and engineering 
• $850,000 to fund a Dickerson Park Zoo playground and bald eagle exhibit 
• $645,833 for a McDaniel Park inclusive playground

CAB stopped short of recommending funds for fiscal 2028, but $13 million in additional funds are requested for the Hawthorn Park master plan implementation at $1.6 million, Gerald Perry tennis courts park renovation at $2.7 million and a Lake Springfield pedestrian bridge at $8.8 million. 

Worley said that before recommending funding for Hawthorn Park, he would like to see a clearer tie-in between the master plan and the Grant Avenue Parkway, located nearby north of the intersection of Grant Avenue and Grand Street. There is a year to work on that, he noted. 

Neighborhood node 
City officials are also working on a plan for National Avenue and Bennett Street, near the art museum, and calling it a neighborhood node.  

That plan brings together several projects, according to Tim Rosenbury, the city’s director of quality of place initiatives; among them are previously contracted improvements of Bennett Street from Glenstone Avenue to the art museum, improvements to the Gerald Perry tennis courts at National Avenue and Bennett Street, and continued work to open up the art museum grounds to Phelps Grove park. There are also potential private developments at the intersection, Rosenbury said. 

CAB unanimously recommended a $75,000 allocation to bring on board a design team for the concept. 

Rosenbury said, “It would be a three- or four-month process, simply to make sure that these different initiatives are coordinated, not so they all would look the same, but they would function in complementary ways.” 

The effort would advance a Forward SGF priority to create neighborhood hubs. 

“This is about making this a neighborhood node that is to Phelps Grove area what Cherry and Pickwick is to Rountree – but it will have a different character, because it’s a different area,” he said. “In planning and urban design, really, cities are nodes and links – and we want great links – that’s why we’re talking about corridors – but we also want links going to great places.”