By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Firefighting buffs, historians and kids of all ages have a treat in the new North Charleston and American LaFrance Fire Museum and Educational Center in the city’s Centre Pointe retail development.

So says museum director Renee Frye. During the week leading up to and including the museum’s April 28 grand opening, the museum attracted some 2,000 visitors. That’s a healthy indication of the museum’s attraction potential, Frye said.

Frye had no estimates on the number of visitors the museum could attract each year. However, in Tennessee, the Fire Museum of Memphis draws between 25,000 and 30,000 visitors annually, said Bill Adelman, the museum’s operations manager.

The $6.3 million museum was built with tax increment financing, in which the increased tax revenues of redeveloped properties fund other development projects.

Constructed on land provided by Richard Weiser, who helped develop Centre Pointe, the museum contains 18 antique fire trucks refurbished and donated by emergency vehicle manufacturer American LaFrance. It also includes vintage fire equipment acquired through private donations and from the personal collection of the museum’s curator, Grant Mishoe.

Exhibits in the more than 25,000-square-foot museum were designed by Dallas-based Museum Arts Inc. Most of the exhibits are interactive. Visitors learn how firefighting evolved from the 19th century to today. One of the larger exhibits shows visitors how to prevent fires from occurring in their homes. For another exhibit, the North Charleston Fire Department contributed a plastic playground slide children can use to learn ways to escape a burning building. A small movie theater features a film showing the history of firefighting.

At other exhibits, visitors test their firefighting knowledge by pressing buttons to match pieces of displayed equipment with their correct names, are challenged to raise a 70-pound firefighting suit by pulling on a rope and get quizzed on their fire-safety knowledge by selecting questions from boxes.

“It’s very interactive and extremely educational in a fun, entertaining way,” said Perrin Lawson, deputy director of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

In addition to exhibits, the museum contains classrooms and meeting space.

The North Charleston and American LaFrance Fire Museum and Educational Center is unlike any other fire museum in the Southeast and will be a “great” tourist attraction, Lawson said.

The museum is located across from the North Charleston Convention Center, near a string of hotels lining International Boulevard and within a major shopping development housing the Tanger Outlet Mall, a Super Wal-Mart, a Sam’s Club and other retailers and restaurants.

The potential visitor traffic is “fantastic,” Lawson said.

For example, while some family members are shopping at Tanger Outlet Mall, which is a mere stone’s throw from the museum, other members less enthusiastic about shopping can spend time in the museum, Lawson pointed out.

“Parents and kids will have a great time going there,” he added.

The museum’s ticket prices are “family friendly,” Frye said. Visitors 13 and older pay $6 while visitors under 13 accompanied by an adult are admitted free of charge.

Is also stands as North Charleston’s first museum, Frye said.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau has an office in the museum. The office is the bureau’s first in North Charleston and something “we’ve wanted for a long time,” Lawson said.

American LaFrance, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, transported the 18 antique vehicles from the company’s Cleveland, N.C., facility to the museum in January.

The idea for the museum came several years ago, when American LaFrance started its North Charleston manufacturing facility in Palmetto Commerce Park and company officials talked with Mayor Keith Summey about a facility for showcasing American LaFrance’s historic firefighting vehicles and equipment.

Dennis Quick covers hospitality and tourism for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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