Osceola County officials are eyeing property that could move the veterans museum closer to the tourist corridor.

The county has already signed a letter of intent with brokers to possibly acquire the property on 4425 W. Vine St., the site of the Coggin Pontiac-GMC Buick dealership that shut its doors last year, County Manager Michael Freilinger said, and convert it into a larger museum to be run by the Osceola County Veterans Council.

The veterans group would move its museum operations to the U.S. Highway 192 site owned by Alan C. Starling, from its current location inside the Osceola Square Mall.

According to Freilinger, the Coggin dealership site could cost about $4 million, with an additional $1 million to redevelop the car dealership into a museum. The county would bond for the costs, and cover them with tourist development tax funds, he said.

“We would bond for those expenditures,” Freilinger said. “We believe we have money in the budget to accommodate that expense.”

County commissioners could vote on the matter as early as Monday during a special meeting.

The potential move has been criticized by some members of the local tourism industry, who say the relocation to a larger, more expensive site could end up costing the county more than just buying and remodeling the property for the veterans.

The Osceola Resort Area Council, which met last week with Freilinger to discuss the veterans museum, said it wanted to see a marketing and business plan from the veterans council showing it would thrive and benefit from a new location.

“To commit to a building that may or may not be in the right location is a concern to us,” Osceola Resort Area Council member John Brost said. “What we don’t need is another (Osceola Heritage Park).”

The museum, which according to the council averages 15,000 to 18,000 visitors yearly, would not be self-sustainable, and would not be enough of a tourism draw to help the tourist tax base.

“I don’t know that if we build it, they will come,” said Mark Brisson, director of marketing for Fun Spot Jr., which is located alongside the veterans museum in Osceola Square Mall. “The Osceola County vets museum has been at the Osceola Square Mall a long time, and they don’t get a lot of people. Before we give that kind of money... to an organization, let’s look at the organization and what they can do.”

Questions about how much work it would take to turn an old car dealership into a museum were brought up at a Tourist Development Council meeting Tuesday.

“Coggin’s looks like it needs a lot of work,” Commissioner John Quiñones, who also sits on the Tourist Development Council, said. “The question is whether the facade can be made to look like a veterans center, and how much is that going to take?”

Freilinger said the county could develop a marketing plan and a master plan for the museum to go along with the property purchase. He said the county also was considering the purchase of an old Sonny’s Bar-B-Q restaurant on West U.S. Highway 192 as an alternative to the Coggin dealership site.

“We believe that we got a pretty good price negotiated for either one of these facilities,” Freilinger said. “We think they’re close enough to the hotel district that an alternate location wouldn’t be that much different.”

Aside from relocating the veterans museum further west of the tourist corridor and closer to area hotels, the county also is eyeing the relocation of the Osceola County Historical Society museum to the county welcome center on West U.S. Highway 192.