You can step inside the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum and witness the past, or you can stand outside and look at the future.
The museum on Fellowship Street held a cookout and movie screening Tuesday night to celebrate the completion of three projects which make it one of the greenest buildings in the county. And that”s at the halfway point of a six-phase project.
First, a little history.
Landscape architect Wayne Wilkerson recalled Tuesday how Joan Wilson, chairman of the museum”s board of trustees, approached him three years ago with a problem. Rainwater was running down the road embankment and pooling beneath the museum, which was damaging the building”s foundation.
Since the heritage museum”s mission is one everyone can support, Oktibbeha County, the City of Starkville and Mississippi State University all pooled their resources and the community chipped in with untold donations. Approximately $17,000 of donated money and countless man-hours later, the museum has a rain garden to soak up storm water, a sand filter to cleanse more water and a brand new front porch.
“It”s a true collaborative effort,” said Wilson.
MSU”s landscape architecture department donated student and staff planning and labor. The city and county donated in-kind services, like sending crews to demolish the old porch and haul it away. And private citizens came through major, not only with money, but with time and supplies.
Bell Building Supply offered discounts on materials. The Oktibbeha County Master Gardeners donated plants and labor.
Corey Gallo, an assistant landscape architecture professor at MSU, designed the rain garden, the first of its kind in Starkville. He and Wilkerson will continue to work with the museum on the next three phases of eco-friendly improvements aimed at capturing and using rainwater to lower utility bills.
“We”re about to install a 2,000-gallon cistern to irrigate so we won”t have to use water during the summer, which will capture water off the roof. Next year, hopefully, we”ll redesign the parking lot and expand the rain garden and install pervious pavement so water will go right through instead of running into the storm sewer,” he said.
Finally, Wilkerson said the museum hopes to construct a structure in its yard to serve as a demonstration site which will include a green roof.
“A green roof has a vegetative covering. It captures water to reduce runoff and also to act as a cooling agent,” said Wilkerson.
That”s right, plants on the roof.
Gallo estimates the final three phases of the museum”s green renovations will cost another $20,000, so more fundraisers are in the works.
District 4 Supervisor Daniel Jackson, who was on hand Tuesday night, is such a believer in the museum”s value that he donated his county board raise, which he voted against, to the renovations. That works out to roughly $2,700.
“Joan came to us with the issues of the wood (porch) getting some age on it and also some heating and cooling problems. I told her I hope the supervisors and the city could come up with something,” he said. “After we passed the raise, I wanted to put it to good use and I gave the first year to the museum.”
Wilson said Jackson”s donation was used as seed money for the projects and the city and county also helped the museum get a new air conditioning unit.
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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