As far as I know, the CorridorTWO project is waaaay down the road (if at all) and not much has been put into it yet. The only recent info I can find is here:
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/p...220.xml&coll=1
LOL this article was right on the front page of the local section in our Sunday Inquirer today. No matter how many times I think about this, I still laugh hysterically! The Mayor REALLY goofed with this crap!
How the West was lost
Harrisburg mayor's dream goes up for auction.
By Mario F. Cattabiani
Inquirer Staff Writer
DALLAS - Piece by piece over years, the items were meticulously amassed using millions in public money - a Gatling gun (that still works), a Wells Fargo stagecoach (circa 1880, fully restored), the earliest known signature of Wyatt Earp (scrawled on a Missouri warrant at age 21).
Those and thousands of other artifacts were once destined for a planned city-owned museum commemorating the Wild West.
Not in Dodge City. Not in Tombstone. Not in Deadwood. Its home was to be Harrisburg - Pennsylvania's capital on the Susquehanna, not on the Mississippi.
That was before the city's finances tanked and the idea of a museum became the punch line of jokes.
At an auction in Dallas yesterday and today, more than 800 Harrisburg-owned artifacts from the nation's westward expansion will go to the highest bidders, with proceeds going to help Harrisburg pay down its debt.
The auction marks the beginning of the end of an ill-fated brainchild - many say boondoggle - of Stephen R. Reed, Harrisburg's longtime mayor, who in the last decade quietly cobbled together the artifacts during shopping trips across the West.
In all, Reed - the man who was so popular that he was dubbed "Mayor for Life" - spent about $7 million from a special-projects account of the Harrisburg Authority, the city's financing arm for infrastructure needs. Angry City Council members said they had no idea of plans for the museum or Reed's buying binges until the local paper broke the story in 2003.
His idea: Lure tourists and their disposable income by building the National Museum of the Old West, though the city is 1,000 miles from any point even remotely considered Western.
Harrisburg, he reasoned, was a gateway for the nation's Western expansion - a major supply point and river crossing for many who set out for gold, land and prosperity. "The West," he was fond of saying, "started here."
"History sells. History attracts tourists. Tourism is big bucks," Reed, a Democrat, said last week. "I still think it's a good idea."
Few others ever did. Critics point to the obvious problems: geography, secretiveness and money.
"If this was Arizona and we actually were in the West and a mayor wanted to spend millions secretly for a museum, it still would be wrong," said Jason Smith, a Harrisburg ad executive and a leading critic of the museum. "It's been a Shakespearean comedy and tragedy in one - a very long play which we are all very much ready to see end."
At the Hilton Anatole hotel yesterday, the auction opened with the sale of several hundred photographs - images of American Indian chiefs, cowboys, and desperados, some in coffins.
About two dozen collectors attended the auction, most from Western states, while hundreds of others phoned in bids or typed them in over the Internet.
One photo of Sitting Bull's war party fetched $12,000.
Within two hours, Rich Ryan of Cheyenne, Wyo., a dealer of Indian artifacts and 19th-century photography, had already won 30 items, paying more than $20,000.
"He obviously had an eye for good things," Ryan said of Reed's purchases. "This was a great collection. I might not see one like this again in my lifetime."
Today, the big-ticket items hit the auction block. They were neatly displayed in a 40,000-square-foot hotel exhibition hall for prospective buyers to inspect.
Six-shooters under glass. Saddles lined up. A chuck wagon parked next to a Conestoga wagon.
In an odd way, it was a glimpse of the museum Reed never got to build.
Rawhide Johnson, a consultant hired by the auctioneer, Heritage Auction Galleries, said Reed had shown vision in selecting the items. They mayor had a mix of everyday objects that depict life in the early West and high-end artifacts.
"He really covered it all, and that's what you need to tell a story, to have a good museum," said Johnson, of Cody, Wyo. "You can say what you want about the money he spent, but, gosh, he did a good job collecting."
For Reed, the museum debacle is perhaps the darkest moment in his otherwise successful 25-year run as mayor.
He is widely credited with turning around Harrisburg, where the once-dormant downtown is now a vibrant business center with an eclectic mix of new restaurants, hotels, and cultural attractions.
Last year, voters at worldmayor.com - a site promoting good government - selected Reed as the third-best city leader on the globe and the highest-ranking one in America.
But, fiscally, the last two years have not been good for the city of 47,000. Much of the fiscal woe is traced to a poorly running incinerator, operated by the authority that Reed tapped to buy the artifacts.
Reed has laid off police and sold the city's double-A minor-league baseball team, the Senators - a franchise Harrisburg bought in 1995 to prevent it from relocating.
Those problems have emboldened Reed critics like never before. And to them, the Old West museum was just what they needed to round up a posse to go after him.
"Steve Reed had his own fetishes and his own pet projects," City Councilwoman Linda Thompson said. "Some might call him crazy, but I will be nice and use the word eccentric. He figured he would be able to ram this down our throats."
Reed envisioned the museum as one of five for the city. Six years ago, Harrisburg opened the the National Civil War Museum, which struggles to attract visitors.
Unconvinced of the economic benefits and irritated they knew nothing of his Wild West plans, the City Council last year passed a resolution compelling Reed to sell the artifacts and help pay down the city's $14 million in debt.
"I kept telling him to sell your toys, sell your toys," Thompson said, recalling her pleas to Reed at meetings. "People are more important than artifacts. We can think of a whole lot of other things we could do with this money."
City streets are going unpaved, and the police force is driving old patrol cars, she added.
A gifted but long-winded orator who injects historical references into many of his speeches, Reed was first elected mayor in 1981. In the last five races he netted enough write-in votes to be on the Republican ticket, too.
Reed is a chain-smoking, 58-year-old bachelor with a pencil-thin, graying mustache and a short tolerance for anyone who questions his leadership. He is a workaholic and Harrisburg's biggest cheerleader. Even his critics give him that.
He delegates very few tasks. When a water main breaks or someone is shot, it's Reed who goes before the news cameras from the wet road or crime scene, many times before the sun rises.
Fred Clark, a former director of the city's downtown improvement district and longtime Reed friend and ally, said the outcry over the museum had created too high a hurdle for the mayor to continue with the project.
"He's a realist. This is what he had to do. It's not like he had five other options to maneuver to," said Clark, who describes the mayor as a cross between visionary Walt Disney and a football coach used to winning seasons.
"If you line up all the things he has done, it's been win, win, win, win, and he has had one losing season and it's like, 'We have to get rid of him now,' " Clark said. "How can you say that after all he has done?"
The snarling political climate probably won't improve for Reed anytime soon. In Tuesday's election, a Reed-backed slate of council candidates lost, ensuring the mayor more headaches from the city's legislative branch.
Reed, who had planned to attend the auction, abruptly canceled last week citing pressing city business.
What's up for bid is but a fraction of what Reed purchased. Thousands of other items - Buffalo Bill's megaphone, a coat owned by Doc Holliday, Annie Oakley's traveling case, a stuffed buffalo - are in Dallas awaiting springtime auctions or in Harrisburg warehouses being prepared to be shipped to Texas.
Selling them all at once would saturate the market, Reed said.
"There are only so many collectors and dealers, and once they have spent their money, all of a sudden you wind up getting pennies on the dollar," he added.
Whether Harrisburg will recoup its investment, or turn a profit, won't be known for some time. Items that don't sell this weekend will remain on eBay for two more weeks.
There's one item Reed jokingly said he shouldn't put on the block just yet - the 1883 Gatling gun, capable of firing 1,200 rounds a minute and expected to fetch more than $140,000 today.
Reed told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that perhaps he should keep it around City Hall awhile: He's up for reelection again in 2009.
To download the Western auction catalog, go to
http://go.philly.com/west