Wichita permanently closes American Indian museum parking lot to protect water supply

After five years of inspections, engineering reports and emergency repairs, the city of Wichita has decided to permanently close the Mid-America All-Indian Museum’s largest parking area, leaving the museum with only 46 available parking stalls.

And the city of Wichita wants to hear feedback on a proposed plan that would replace a beloved sledding hill next to the museum with a new parking lot to make up for it.

The closed, 260-stall parking lot, west of the museum across Seneca, sits on top of the city’s emergency drinking water supply — several large and structurally compromised storage reservoirs where the city stores millions of gallons of treated water. It has been closed since August.

The city contends the storage reservoirs can no longer support the added weight of hundreds of vehicles. And they likely shouldn’t have had parking lots on top of them in the first place, said Alan King, director of public works and utilities.

“They were never designed to have load-bearing caps, so even the dirt that’s on them, that’s stretching it a little bit,” King said. “You put vehicles on top of it, and that was never a purpose they were designed for.”

At the closed parking lot, King said, the city wants to remove the pavement and dirt from the underground concrete storage reservoirs, rehabilitate the caps and then cover the land, “so that it’s a nice, beautiful green space.”

“It’s a beautiful part of the city, right there by the river,” King said. “So we’d like to do something like that, maybe even some interpretive signs or some art or something. I think we have higher and better use for that property than a parking lot, particularly if it’ll no longer serve as a parking lot.”

King said anything other than green space or light development would likely be a nonstarter above the reservoirs.

“In their current condition, any additional weight load is off the table,” King said. “We just can’t do that in good conscience. If we wanted to put something on there, even if it was a building or something that had some weight to it, we’d have to make some improvements to it. . . . But you’re talking about tens of millions of dollars to do something like that.”

Community members are invited to share their thoughts at a town hall meeting at Mid-America All-Indian Museum at 650 N. Seneca at 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

Wichita City Council member Maggie Ballard, who represents the district and sits on the museum’s board, said she called for the meeting to hear from residents before the city, which owns the museum and its land, makes any final decisions about new or old parking for the museum.

“We’re not doing anything without having some type of town hall where we give people the opportunity to come and listen to us and get some feedback,” Ballard said. “Maybe someone has a great idea that we haven’t thought of.”

Ballard said she knows removing the hill northwest of the Mid-America All-Indian Museum is not ideal. “But the last thing I want to do is not be supportive of the museum,” she said.

“I feel like they already kind of get treated like the stepchild — when you look at the art museum and Botanica and Exploration Place and Cowtown — they get treated like they’re the Keeper of the Plains visitor center, and they’re not,” she said.

The Mid-America All-Indian Museum is dedicated to the history and culture of Native Americans and includes entertainment space, meeting places and a collection of more than 3,000 artifacts.

“Parking is an issue,” she said. “How are you going to have a powwow where you’re going to encourage 400 or more people to show up when you have, like, 40 parking spots?

“I am on that board, and the board is almost excited about the potential of having a new parking lot because they’re basically operating with one arm tied behind their back because they don’t have that lot right now.”