It made no sense to Irish Americans Jim McMahon and Bill Robertson.
Why did Jewish Americans have the Skirball Cultural Center, black Angelenos the California African American Museum in Exposition Park and Japanese Americans a museum in Little Tokyo, while the estimated 1 million Irish Americans in Los Angeles had no museum or major cultural center?
"Everybody has a center except the Irish," said McMahon, 50, a native of Northern Ireland who became an American citizen in July.
McMahon, who owns a waterproofing business in Simi Valley, noted that there are half a dozen Irish American organizations active in Southern California, including the Ancient Order of the Hibernians, the Los Angeles Police Emerald Society, the Southern California Irish Network, the Irish Fair Foundation and the Celtic Arts Center.
"There's a whole lot of them doing stuff for the Irish," he said, but none of it has translated into a full-fledged center.
Tom McConville, host for 29 years of "The Irish Hour" on KIEV radio, who now has a similar show on the Cable Radio Network, said people have been talking about building an Irish cultural center in Los Angeles "since I came here 30 years ago."
A native of Portadown, Northern Ireland, McConville said he is part of a group called the Irish Center of Southern California that has raised about $80,000. But McConville said the project is not much closer to realization than it was when it was first discussed about seven years ago, at a meeting in a Westside hotel.
"Everybody was enthusiastic," he recalled, "but people fell by the wayside."
Last year, a frustrated McMahon formed yet another Irish-themed nonprofit organization, the Irish National Heritage Foundation, to build a center.
Assisting McMahon is Robertson, 38, of Sherman Oaks, who met McMahon when both played drums at police memorials as members of the Emerald Society.
The men have ambitious plans. They hope to raise $30 million to create a new, Skirball-like Irish-American Heritage Museum, Cultural Education and Music Center in Southern California. McMahon said the center would be in Cerritos, close to the geographical center of the region.
The center would include a museum, a performing arts center, a genealogical center, a library, a restaurant and a pub. It would also have a business development program to encourage economic ties with Ireland.
