The Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum has won a bid for a major Harlem building and development site and is preparing a $150M capital campaign. With Cleveland housing the Rock Hall of Fame, it looks like Manhattan’s Harlem will be home to its hip hop equivalent.
If rock and roll was for baby boomers, Hip Hop is today’s dominant youth culture worldwide. Harlem is therefore an appropriate home for the new museum as it has an
important place in hip hop history. Hip-hop developed in part from performers with Harlem roots. These include Big L, Kurtis Blow and Immortal Technique. It is also the birthplace of popular hip-hop dances such as the Harlem shake, toe wop, and Chicken Noodle Soup.
The Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum is a non-profit educational institution. Its mission is to preserve, archive, eExhibit, educate, and showcase Hip Hop music and culture from across the world. In addition, the museum also endevours to research and study hip-hop’s influence on American popular culture and its socio-economic impact on societies around the world.
The development plan anticipates finalising the acquisition of the building over the next few months. The team will then start the redesign work on both the building’s exterior and interior infrastructure. This is phase 1 and is set to open in February 2018.
Phase One of The Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum
JT Thompson is the founder of the Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum (HHHOF). He is also the executive Producer (and creator) of the first ever Hip Hop Hall of Fame Awards TV show. This aired on BET Network in the 1990s.
He says, ‘The preliminary plan includes a ground floor themed HHHOF café, gallery, visitors bureau, and retail gift store with a second floor HHHOF museum, event space, offices, and multi-media studio for film and television content production in partnership with the HHHOF Arts & Media Youth Academy students that will be training for careers in tech and media, while producing real-life content for the museum, and the hip hop television channel 
network’.
Phase II will include a full scale design and build development of the entire site. This is expected to be around 20 stories high. The development will house the Hall of Fame, the Museum, a 5 Star Hotel, a mall and shop. There will also be an arcade, televsion studios, a restaurant, a concert lounge and a sports bar. The plan is to attract up to a million visitors a year.
Furthermore, the HHHOF intends the attraction to be integrated with ‘green technology and energy vonservation’ facilities. They will, “aggressively explore and utilize all of the available cost and energy saving technologies and mechanisms that are currently in the marketplace”.
The Development Team
The HHHOF will also have a strong educational component. it plans for up to 25,000 NYC public school children to visit each year.
The facility will create hundreds of jobs. The museum anticipates it will contribute in the region of $350M in socio-economic benefits to New York City and the Tri-State region each yearr once phase II is completed.
The HHHOF is launching a $150M capital fundraising campaign to complete the acquisition of the Harlem building and development site.
The development project manager is Thompson International Professionals.
Healy-Kohler Design is the creative exhibit design and building consultant on the project. It is led by Terrance Healy, Ms. Terrie Rouse of Rouse Consulting who has been serving as senior consultant advisor on the project’s museum operations development.
The HHHOF will also engage the The Switzer Group, Inc., biggest black-owned interior architectural design firm and one of the top 100 American design firms.
