New Recorded Sound History Museum Proposed in Camden NJ

[Stevramm@xxxxxxx]

Well, the Victor Building in Camden is still to become Condos but this 
article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer brings new hope for a museum.

Steve

Museum in Camden proposed 

A $50 million complex on the waterfront would explore recorded sound. Its 
name: SoundWave. 

By Will Van Sant 
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF 

CAMDEN - As home to the Victor Talking Machine Co. and RCA Victor, perhaps no 
other city was as vital as Camden to the global popularization of recorded 
sound in the last century.

Hoping to capitalize on this legacy, the Cooper's Ferry Development 
Association announced plans yesterday for a museum of sound recording on the 
Camden waterfront.

"Camden gave the gift of sound to the world," said Tom Corcoran, president of 
Cooper's Ferry, which has managed waterfront development in the city since 
1984. "We ought to commemorate what happened here."

The cost of SoundWave: The International Museum of Recorded Sound and Music 
Entertainment Center was put at $50 million, with a completion date of 2005 
if the money can be raised.

The Delaware River Port Authority has given $75,000 in start-up money, and 
some of it has been used to hire Avi Decter as project manager. Decter, of 
Haddonfield, is an interpretive planner who has worked for the U.S. Holocaust 
Memorial Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Louisville Slugger 
Museum.

"I help museums tell the story that they want to tell," Decter said, "and 
help them stick to the story."

His task during the next year, he said, is to expand the network of resources 
devoted to making the sound museum a reality, create a governing authority 
for it, and raise about $500,000 for museum design and planning.

Proponents said they hoped to raise the $50 million from public and private 
sources that have yet to be identified.

Plans call for the multistory, 100,000-square-foot museum to be built between 
Federal and Market Streets near Delaware Avenue. That would put it between 
the New Jersey State Aquarium and the Camden terminal of a tramway linking 
the city's downtown with Penn's Landing in Philadelphia. A final site is to 
be chosen within six months.

"Of all the attractions that we have worked on on the Camden waterfront, I 
think this will be the most exciting," Corcoran said. "We see this in some 
ways as being the crown jewel."

SoundWave is to be the last public waterfront attraction that Cooper's Ferry 
will undertake, Corcoran said. Future development, he said, will focus on 
hotels, restaurants and other private enterprises.