The New Mexico Route 66 Museum in Tucumcari closed abruptly last week amid accusations from the city that it had not paid rent for years, amid an expired lease.
City records indicate the lease, which was enacted and signed in 2015, expired in November 2020.
The city found no records that the museum had paid any rent for at least five years. According to the original lease, the museum was required to pay 10% of its net profits for rent.
More details can be found in a report at the Eastern New Mexico News, my day job.
The Route 66 museum’s closing comes less than six months before the centennial year of 2026, when towns, businesses, and entities along the highway are expected to see a significant surge in tourists.
A TV station in Amarillo, Texas, also featured the museum in a story broadcast on Friday, apparently unaware that it had closed just a few days prior.
The museum’s president, Dave Shine, notified the city by phone on July 22 that it had closed effective immediately and would remove all memorabilia by Aug. 1.
The museum’s docent for the past six years, Ken Christian, was also let go by the museum’s operators on July 22. He said the last time the museum was open was July 19.
Christian said he and the operators weren’t aware of any such lease.
A document packet for a July 22 city commission meeting contained a copy of the 2015 agreement signed by Shine and a now-deceased mayor.
The city manager, Renee Hayoz, said she would have been amenable to working out a lease agreement. But she said the fact that the museum was operating rent-free on city property — inside the Tucumcari Convention Center — would have been a violation of the state’s anti-donation clause.
Dave Shine initially declined to comment earlier this week but said the museum’s contents were being transferred to another unspecified museum in another state.
The museum claimed on its website that it was being operated as a federally recognized nonprofit organization. However, the Internal Revenue Service website showed its nonprofit status had been revoked in 2014 for failing to file the proper yearly forms.
The museum had been registered with the New Mexico Secretary of State as a domestic nonprofit organization. That status was revoked in 2013 because it failed to submit a registered agent.
The museum, which opened in 2012, received some complaints over the years for its erratic or limited operating hours. Just last month, the facility’s Facebook account asked for volunteers to help run it.
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