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If ever there was a sure-fire, bet-the-ranch, call-your-broker, lead-pipe-cinch, it was the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum.

Can't miss, right? A sparkling showpiece to celebrate Albuquerque's central role in the sport of ballooning? Parked atop the emerald field where 700 balloons announce our supremacy to the world each October?

That's a natural.

Only problem is, the museum has been as much whoops as whoosh since it opened. And in a town poised to make huge financial commitments toward public projects in the near future, it is a cautionary tale.

There is nothing wrong with the museum itself. Perched on a ridge overlooking Balloon Fiesta Park, it's just lovely. The exhibits are an homage to the past and present of ballooning, with a fine look at the 1978 Double Eagle II trans-Atlantic flight - perhaps the proudest single moment in this city's history.

But if you feel a chill while walking through the place, it's not a breeze from ballooning lore.

It's a hot Wednesday afternoon, so I'm not exactly expecting the "30 minutes from here" line you'd see at Disneyland's Matterhorn. But . . . c'mon. In a 58,000-square-foot building, there are four visitors - me, a grandma and two kids. We've got just enough for a game of bridge.

City officials don't publicly call crowds like this a disaster, but they are being forced to recognize that just because you've built it, it doesn't mean they will come.

At least, not in droves.

Mayor Martin Chavez's administration refuses to fold. It is building a large reflecting pool in front of the museum, a controversial doodad that, no doubt, will improve aesthetics, if not attendance. Critics complain the money should be spent for meat-and-potatoes items at the adjoining park - starch that matters to the hordes who flock to the park come balloon fiesta time.

"The administration's idea is to put more money into it - let's enhance it further, spend more money," says City Council President Debbie O'Malley. "I guess sometimes that works; I'm trying to think of things where that does work. But in this case, you have to wonder about the future of the facility. It's a very specialized kind of museum. You have to go a ways to get there. You've got to wonder if we're throwing good money after bad."

Museum manager Jeffrey Cooper-Smith defends the museum's progress, saying its attendance figures stood at 49,429 from October 2006 to June 2007 - a 4 percent increase from the same period after the museum's opening in 2005. He also cautions that comparing the balloon museum to its Downtown and Old Town cousins is misleading, because many new museums struggle initially, and because the balloon museum is a niche product.

"I think that's a real challenge for us - for people to understand who we are, what our expectations are," he says. "Not to compare what we should be doing versus the art and history museums."

In the deafening silence of the midday blues, it's easy to second-guess the north Albuquerque location. It's far from most of the city's other cultural attractions, like the Albuquerque Biological Park, the National Hispanic Cultural Center and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

Few expressed those concerns when it was first proposed. I know I didn't. It made perfect sense - balloon museum next to balloon park. Like I said, a natural.

So, recriminations aside, the question becomes how to make it better attended, better utilized, worth the whopping $1.3 million a year it takes to operate.

The city is moving toward using parts of the museum as leased event space - for weddings, board meetings, even proms. That might help. But in the meantime, the museum stands as a quiet reminder that major public projects need a very long look from the politicians who propose them and the public that funds them.

At this very moment, Albuquerque is talking about a new arena, about a streetcar. Nothing wrong with those concepts, but in practice, they've got to deliver. If they don't, we're left with a very unhappy reality for a very long time.

"We've got to suck it up," says O'Malley. "We're stuck with this thing. We bought this puppy."

Caveat emptor. Sometimes, the things that make the most sense cause the greatest headaches.