Friday, October 19, 2007
By Mike Copeland
Tribune-Herald business editor
Gloria Young, chief fundraiser for Waco’s mammoth project, was so excited that she could barely keep the news to herself during the hours leading up to a news conference Thursday afternoon near City Hall.
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When she finally took the microphone, she talked about how raindrops are falling and won’t stop until the water level reaches $3.2 million — the amount needed to build the first phase of a project to protect fragile mammoth bones found along the Brazos River.
Then she talked about a big raindrop that came courtesy of Waco businessman and philanthropist Paul Meyer and his wife, Jane.
The Meyers have pledged to match all donations to the mammoth site from this week forward, up to $1.5 million.
Waco businessman Don Moes, owner of Equipment Depot, promptly pledged $50,000 that the Meyers now must equal.
“We’re going to match it, no doubt about it,” City Manager Larry Groth said of the Meyers’ $1.5 million promise. “The people in this community are generous, and it’s always easier to raise money when someone sets a matching figure.”
Protecting prehistory
Since the mammoth site was discovered in 1978, Baylor University researchers have found 24 Columbian mammoths, a prehistoric camel and a cat. Many of the skeletons now are in storage at Baylor, but some remain under a tent at the site. They need protection from the elements and from possible disturbances by man.
Local officials are pursuing some kind of National Park Service designation for the site, which would make it more of a tourist draw.
But a more pressing need is to protect its valuable contents.
The project’s first phase would include a visitors center, roads to the site and a climate-controlled pavilion.
The Waco Mammoth Foundation had raised about $1.5 million toward its $3.2 million goal when the Paul & Jane Meyer Family Foundation chipped in $270,000. Then the Meyers took that gift further by making a personal pledge of $1.5 million, said Young, a fundraiser for the project.
Officials said the Meyers have not pledged to match money already raised.
With between $1.7 million and $1.8 million already raised, and with the Meyers’ pledge of $1.5 million in matching funds on the table, officials are confident they will raise the $3.2 million to complete Phase 1 and more. They will move closer to raising the $11.4 million needed for the complete build-out of the 109-acre mammoth site that would include trails and more education-related facilities.
Groth said he hopes work on the first phase will begin next year.
Moes said he and Waco businessman M.N. (Buddy) Bostick, longtime former owner of KWTX-TV, shelled out more than $100,000 each to buy the land around the mammoth site several years ago.
“I wanted to invest in this further because I believe the mammoth site is potentially the catalyst that makes the Lake Brazos corridor successful,” said Moes, president of the Waco Mammoth Foundation board.
“It will become a destination point, a traffic generator, a place on the river people want to visit, along with the zoo, the Mayborn Museum and Cameron Park,” Moes said, adding that it could spur development that includes restaurants and water taxis.
‘A great asset for Waco’
Jim Vaughan, president of the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, called the Meyers’ pledge “phenomenal.”
He believes the community will respond to it as it did to the chamber’s campaign to raise money for a new headquarters. That nearly $4 million building now is going up not far from Waco City Hall.
Paul and Jane Meyer did not attend Thursday’s news conference, but spokesman Terry Irwin said, “They really believe the site will provide immense educational opportunity for children. In addition, the site is a great asset for Waco and may attract people worldwide here.”
Paul Meyer, 79, probably is best known for founding a company called Success Motivation Institute, which has generated about $2 billion in personal development business since it was started, said Irwin, vice president of the Paul & Jane Meyer Family Foundation and CEO of the Meyer companies, which now number 31 worldwide.
Also Thursday, City Manager Groth said he attended a National Parks Foundation Summit earlier this week in Austin, where he spoke with U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Mary Bomar, director of the National Park Service.
They are good people to get to know, he said, as Waco pursues a National Park Service designation for the mammoth site.
“The interior secretary shared his chief of staff with us, and we took him to the mammoth site. He was blown away,” Groth said.
The National Park Service has determined the mammoth site meets its criteria for a designation. Yet to be determined is who will own and operate the site and whether it will be designated a full-fledged national park or something else within the service.
“We’re building Phase 1 in accordance with National Park Service guidelines in hopes of becoming a park service unit,” Young said.
mcopeland@wacotrib.com
757-5736
