Posted online by C.R. Roberts at 3:43 p.m. Friday The LeMay Automobile Museum has received its largest corporate donation to date for operational expenses and for its 195,000-square-foot Collector Car Center to be built near the Tacoma Dome, museum CEO David Madeira said Friday.

Madeira offered an update on Thursday’s quarterly meeting of the museum board.

A few points:

Big donation: The museum has received $1.6 million from AAA Washington – the largest corporate donation to date – with 20 percent going to the operations budget and 80 percent to the building fund of the Collector Car Center.

For the donation, AAA Washington receives naming rights to “AAA Heritage Row,” a quarter-mile-long esplanade that will wind its way through the museum.

The gift, Madeira said, “is a good shot in the arm during a difficult time. It puts us within $15 million of the goal for the first phase. It puts us at 75 percent of our first-phase goal.”

Collecting local money: And as that goal goes, Madeira said, “the board has decided that we need to turn our attention to a local campaign. We’ve brought in support nationally with members in 44 states, and we have members from four other countries, and the clear message is that if we are going to build a museum in Tacoma, the people here need to show their support. The community needs to support it.”

The message he’s going to be sending over the next several months, he said, is that people here “need to show they want it.”

Beginning now, the campaign will extend through December of next year. It has begun with one-on-one solicitations of community leaders and business people – with the sources of funding that have built other projects in the area, and the people who stand to benefit from development – and will grow to include solicitations of smaller donations from the public.

“Between our retail and the museum, the operations can bring over a million people to Tacoma from around the world,” Madeira said. “We have established a broad network that will help sustain the museum. The community needs to recognize what the museum can be, and stand up and support it.”

The goal of the local campaign is $10 million, he said.

A retail portion: Madeira said the board also discussed retail development in the area around the Tacoma Dome.

He said the museum has letters of intent from two national developers interested in the area – and from one theater chain that proposes building a multiscreen movie house beneath the proposed museum show field.

One of the developers, with headquarters in Los Angeles, would like to work with both the city and the LeMay in brokering Tacoma Dome retail space in the area controlled by a city-museum partnership.

The city has been aware of this offer for several months, Madeira said.

The other proposal, new to the table, comes from a national developer – also unnamed – that proposes to work on property controlled by the museum board.

“What’s important,” Madeira said, “is that they’re not interested if the museum’s not there.”

Ryan Petty, Tacoma’s Community and Economic Development Administration director, said the city was aware that Madeira had a conversation with a national developer, but that he was not aware of a letter of intent.

He said a group of Dome District stakeholders is considering options and working to supplement a comprehensive plan approved by the City Council in 2001.