The storefront that sits on the Loudoun Street Mall may look empty, but inside it's full of potential. Volunteers Douglas Gomery and Vickie Liu, who serve as historians for the Celebrating Patsy Cline organization, are sitting at a large table full of documents and papers on all things Patsy Cline. President Judy Sue Huyett-Kempf joins them as they tie up work on the upcoming capital campaign kickoff. Although the large room is relatively empty now, it won't be in the next year.

"We have collected over 600 photos of Patsy Cline," says Gomery, who's favorite includes possibly the earliest picture taken of Cline, when she was 3 years old. "We have hundreds of thousands of artifacts."

And with just 7,000 square feet to fill on the first floor, there will be plenty of room to fill.

Huyett-Kempf is no stranger to collecting Patsy Cline information. For ten years, she served as the tourism director for the area, and remembers fans of Pasty coming in to the visitor center, requesting information on the singer.

"They said, 'we want to eat where she ate; shop where she shopped," she said. "But nothing was organized," she said. "Then we learned more and more (about Patsy), and the demand grew." Huyett-Kempf said that bus tours would call her office, looking for tours and a museum about the singer; but nothing existed.

Her office began putting together a tour, which includes stops at WINC-FM, Gaunt's Drug Store, and her former home on Kent Street.

That's also when the vision for the museum was born.

Since then, the organization has continued collecting artifacts and other memorabilia, and the dream for the official Patsy Cline Museum is becoming a reality.

"We would love to be open in 2007," Huyett-Kempf said. "It all depends on how quickly we raise money. Patsy would be 75 in 2007- what a perfect birthday gift."

The organization had originally set an opening date of September 2006. Though that time has come and past, Huyett-Kempf doesn't see that as a bad thing.

"Our vision has changed totally. In our original dream, we saw a dress...a hat...not knowing the involvement the museum would need. We are now learning rapidly," she said.

The small-town dream of the original museum has been replaced by something much larger. The organization was approached by design firm Ralph Applebaum Associates, who requested to design the museum.

Among the projects in their portfolio--the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

"That was a high honor," said Gomery. "They just had heard about the project and wanted to get involved."

That, combined with a professionally-run capital fundraising campaign, were factors in pushing back the opening date. But Huyett-Kempf said that the additional time needed to make the museum a first-class center is well worth it.

But one thing that's for certain-- this museum is long overdue.

"It's way overdue," Huyett-Kempf said. "It's 43 years past due."

She reconsiders. "Or, you could say that it has taken 43 years to build a world class museum in honor of Patsy Cline."

For more information about Celebrating Patsy Cline, go to www.celebratingpatsycline.org or call 1-888-608-2726.