SANTA PAULA : Buffs Revel in Old Planes at Air Museum

Not long ago Jack Hogan walked into Clayton Graves’ hangar at Santa Paula Airport. He heard Graves, 73, a Santa Paula resident and pilot for most of his life, rummaging in the loft. Hogan asked what he was looking for. The reply filtered down with the dust.

“He said someone was looking for a part for the ignition system for a Warner engine and he knew he had one up there somewhere,” Hogan said. “They haven’t built Warner engines in 40 years. That sort of stuff is all over Santa Paula airport.”

A group of Santa Paula residents, Hogan included, hope to put the memorabilia under one roof by establishing an aviation and automobile museum on nine acres bordering the airport.

Under a plan spearheaded by Santa Paula mayor and realty agent Kay Wilson, a 20,000-square-foot museum with a cafe, offices and an observation deck could become home to vintage airplanes and assorted aviation memorabilia. It would house old flight uniforms, paintings and log books etched with the jottings of pilots who took to the skies in planes made of fabric stretched over wood.

Santa Paula Airport, famous in aviation circles for its antique aircraft, is already an informal museum of sorts. Visitors watch vintage planes lift into the sky or gawk up close as airplane owners tinker in hangars clustered around the small, privately owned airport.

“We’re finding that there are antiques both at the airport and in this town that are just collecting dust,” Wilson said. “People don’t know what to do with them. These things could be lost forever if something like this museum doesn’t become a reality.”

According to Wilson, the museum could eventually be expanded to include antique cars and motorcycles. Its primary tenants, however, would be aircraft, mainly airplanes built before and during World War II. Many would come from vintage planes now housed at the airport by a small group of aviation buffs. The planes would be displayed at the museum on a rotating basis, pilots donating their planes for short periods.

The museum would be about 2,000 feet from the runway, making it easy for planes to taxi over to go on display. Visitors with antique craft could display them at tie-downs in front of the museum, Wilson said.

Before it can fly, the museum needs money and land.

Building it will cost about $2.6 million, Wilson said. Although fund-raising efforts are only in the preliminary stage, museum backers hope to raise money from federal grants and through the sale of storage hangars that will be built alongside the museum.

They also need city permission to lease the nine-acre parcel next to the airport. Formerly a burning dump, the land has been vacant for more than a decade. A lease would be accompanied by extensive soils tests, Wilson said.

She said that museum backers hope to approach the city with formal plans by the end of the summer and that construction could begin by spring.

Fellow City Council member Les Maland said discussing the museum’s future would be premature.

“The idea really hasn’t come out of the eggshell yet,” Maland said. “The concept of an airplane museum in Santa Paula is a good one. It would be an attraction just like the airport is. However, when and where are things that still need to be discussed.”

Museum backers say they are optimistic.

“Everybody has talked about building a museum, and it just hasn’t happened,” said Hogan. “This time I think it will.”