The new Grants Pass Museum will be in downtown Grants Pass -- not Riverside Park.

After reaching an impasse with Grants Pass Mayor Gordon Anderson over potential censorship of its exhibits, The Museum Board closed a deal Friday morning on an 8,000-square-foot building in the city's Old Town section, museum spokeswoman Medora Nankervis said.

The purchase price was $295,000.

The old, two-story brick building at 229 G St. used to be a seed and grocery store. It has room for offices, a workshop, classes and a kitchen in addition to exhibit space.

"It's really just ideal." Nankervis said. "We'll be able to have events and banquets."

The structure boasts 4,000 square feet of space upstairs, 1,000 more than the museum's share of a proposed building in Riverside Park. It's near Rogue Community College's Firehouse Gallery and other shops that take part in the Grants Pass arts community's "First Friday"

events each month. Nankervis said the building needs few modifications other than those needed to make it handicapped-accessible.

Museum board members decided to go their own way instead of working with the city after being unable to resolve a long-simmering censorship squabble with Anderson.

The museum and the city originally planned to replace the museum's longtime Riverside Park building with a larger building. Both building and cost would have been shared, with the city putting up $223,000 and the museum $325,000. The museum would have paid $1 a year in rent on the land.

The plan started to come unraveled when Anderson said he wanted the city to have control over what could be exhibited at the museum. Museum officials said they wouldn't agree to censorship. The mayor said in a City Council meeting that he didn't want to see a crucifix in a glass of urine, a reference to a controversial art exhibit some years ago in Ohio.

When the City Council agreed that the museum should control its own exhibits, Anderson threatened to veto the deal, and council members threatened to overturn a veto.

Anderson withdrew the veto threat but then insisted on a deal that would have given the city the right to kick the museum out of the new site at any time for any reason.

"I think good faith went by the wayside," City Council Member Lynn Attebury said Friday. "They couldn't do it with that hanging over them."

"We could have been tossed out on our ear," Nankervis said.

Prompted by the flap, a dialog on censorship sponsored by local churches was put on Oct. 2 at RCC. The mayor was invited but didn't attend.

Nankervis said the offer museum officials signed on the G Street property six weeks ago would have allowed them to back out without penalty for 45 days, just in case there was a breakthrough with the city.

"We were hoping the mayor would come around," Nankervis said. "He just got worse."

Anderson was out of town Friday to attend a meeting in Portland.

What will apparently be the last art exhibit ever at the old museum is scheduled to open Nov. 23 and run through Dec. 18.

Two shops occupying the ground floor of the building are expected to remain, Nankervis said.