By: (AP) The International Museum of Cartoon Art will leave South Florida because of increasing debts, a looming mortgage payment, and a shortage of paying visitors.
The $3.8 million building at the south end of Mizner Park will be put up for sale to pay off the museum's $2 million debt and preserve its collection of nearly 200,000 pieces of comic strips, editorial cartoons, and other works, its officers said last week.
The museum, aided by money from the Hearst Foundation, will stay in Mizner Park until the building is sold, founder Mort Walker told the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale in last Friday's editions.
It's looking at several locations for a new home, including New York or Connecticut, said Walker, creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip.
He said the museum had expected to attract about 250,000 visitors annually, but the most it drew in one year was 70,000.
Walker founded the museum in Connecticut in 1974. It was moved to Boca Raton in 1990 from Rye Brook, N.Y., and opened in 1996.
"It breaks my heart to sell this beautiful building," Walker said in a statement. "However, in the real world, cold financial facts take precedence over a cartoonist's cherished dream."
On the Net:
http://www.cartoon.org
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