RALEIGH – Alaska has – or had – its famous Bridge to Nowhere. And North Carolina has its famous Sparta Teapot Museum.

Actually, the past tense is required here, too. The project now bears a new name, the Sparta Teapot Museum of Craft and Design, and a broaden mission. Having received millions of taxpayer dollars to build a massive facility in the Alleghany County town to house a California millionaire’s teapot collection, the organization has come to the conclusion that the original plan made no practical sense.

Welcome back down to Earth, ladies and gentlemen.

So the plan now is to showcase a wider array of crafted objects, including works by local artists. The museum’s director, Cynthia Grant, has mastered a different kind of craft: the artful use of words to dress up a homely reality. “We’re reaching beyond the walls of the museum,” she told the Winston-Salem Journal. “We’re building opportunities for people to have fun and to learn. There is context now.”

Later, Grant grappled with that intimidating hinged barricade that has kept so many travelers from venturing into the temporary museum in Sparta. “Bringing in speakers and demonstrators will make people more aware of what is inside that door they have to step through to get to the museum,” she said.

As is so often true, there is an apt Spinal Tap reference to be had in this case. I’m referring to the point in the film at which mockumentary producer Marty DiBergi challenges band manager Ian Faith to explain what appears to be clear evidence that the band’s popularity is waning:

Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they were, uh, booked into 10,000-seat arenas, and 15,000-seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they’re being booked into 1,200-seat arenas, 1,500-seat venues, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh…the popularity of the group is waning?

Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.

Having spent a fair amount of time there as a youth, I have a soft spot for Sparta and wish it well. Unfortunately, the national ridicule of the teapot museum as an economic-development project deserving millions of taxpayer dollars was clearly earned. Those who pursued and awarded the state and federal grants did the community no real service, though obviously they thought they were at the time. Nor was it truly in Sparta’s interest for some consultant to concoct a “study” predicting that the finished museum would attract 61,000 annual visitors and $7.5 million in new tourism spending. With traditional industries declining, community leaders and political representatives wanted to believe such pie-in-the-sky estimates, and let their exuberance crowd out reasonable doubt and common sense.

In case the lesson has yet to sink in, good intentions are not sufficient building materials to pave a road – or bridge – that you’d really want to travel all the way to its final destination.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.