Southwest Museum Cool to Expansion Plan : Cultural attractions: Director tells city officials that the facility would rather move its American Indian collection out of town than renovate its Mt. Washington location. Councilman Hernandez calls the threat to relocate a scare tactic.

If the city does not find the Southwest Museum a new home, its world-renowned collection of American Indian art may be moved from Los Angeles, the institution’s director has told the city.

The museum has been soliciting proposals from cities across a five-county area of Southern California in its search for a new home. Instead of proposing a new site, the Los Angeles City Council suggested that the museum stay at its current location--an imposing stucco building at the foot of Mt. Washington that has been the institution’s home since 1914.

The City Council said the museum could renovate and expand, at a lower projected cost than moving, to meet its modern day needs.

But the letter from museum Director Thomas Wilson, dated Sept. 10, said that a museum-sponsored study determined that a new site would best address the museum’s requirements.

The city, he wrote, “must understand very clearly that . . . it is responding to an alternative that our long-range planning study considers less desirable than a first-rate new location.”

Wilson went on to warn that several other cities are interested in the museum relocating to their locales. “Many of these (proposals) go well beyond offers of prime real estate and include other incentives to attract the Southwest Museum,” he said.

Councilman Mike Hernandez, who has been a strong proponent of keeping the museum at its present location, was angered by the letter. “I do not believe the board of the museum is acting in good faith with the city,” he said. The councilman, in whose district the museum is located, has been working on measures to make the Southwest Museum an anchor attraction in an area that includes other historic sites.

“When (museum officials) came to my office to talk about this, they said that the (current) site was an equal option,” he said.

He labeled the threat to move a scare tactic.

“I think what they really want is for the city to give them land in Griffith Park so that they can be close to the Gene Autry (Western Heritage) museum,” he said. “Put the cowboys next to the Indians.”

Wilson said in an interview that the board still considers the current site a viable option. But he said staying there has disadvantages, even if the museum were expanded to include additional exhibition space, classroom facilities and loading docks.

“If we were to add the space to the museum that we need,” Wilson said, “there would be no open space left on the site. And for a museum that is about the American Indian, you need open space for powwows and marketplaces and other events.”

Among the cities expressing interest in the museum, officials said, are Garden Grove, Moorpark, Santa Ana, Fullerton, Malibu, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Camarillo.

Moving to a new location would bring the museum “much closer to the fulfillment of what we want for the museum in the future than . . . at our current site,” said Michael Heumann, a board member and chairman of the institution’s long-range planning committee.

The museum board has set a deadline of Nov. 30 for the submission of final proposals for relocation of the facility.

But Hernandez said he does not believe Los Angeles should suggest other local sites.

“I told the museum people that I would do everything I could to help them stay where they were, and I meant it,” he said.

“Now I say I will do everything I can to keep them from moving, and I mean that too.”