Nature center opening delayed again

Claudia Figueroa

BACK BAY -- The opening of the county’s multimillion-dollar interpretive

center has been set back several months and now faces a budget increase

for state-of-the-art exhibits, officials say.

Patti Schooley, the county’s district supervisor for coastal and

historical facilities, said the county will request an additional

$100,000 for the completion of the center’s exhibits from the Board of

Supervisors at its March 28 meeting.

The facility’s 3,000-square-foot exhibit area was originally budgeted at

$300,000, but the cost to complete the exhibit is exceeding the county’s

original goal, Schooley said.

“A lot of it has to do with the creativity of the exhibit,” she said.

Tim Miller, division manager for Harbors, Beaches and Parks, said the

additional funds would help pay for a “critter aquarium” and an “eco-mud

room.”

“The difference in the exhibit’s quality would be the equivalent of the

difference between a Disneyland ride and a fairground attraction,” Miller

said.

Denny Turner, manager of landscape and architecture design for Orange

County, said the building’s $3.5-million budget already includes an

audiovisual display room, a public wet-and-dry laboratory with

microscopes, and an amphitheater modeled after a bird’s nest.

Construction of the 10,000-square-foot subterranean building, which began

in April 1998, was originally scheduled to open at the end of this month.

But county officials said they were delayed for several months during the

El Nino-fueled storms of 1997. Now the center is expected to have a grand

opening in mid-October, Turner said.

“In the process of building the center, we’ve had to order several

different construction materials,” Turner said. “The delay is not

unacceptable and not something we didn’t expect when building a facility

like this.”

Officials say once the facility is completed, it will be the county’s

largest nature center. And locals are anticipating the center’s impact on

the city once the upscale project is completed.

“It’s a big project they’re undertaking,” said Deputy City Manager David

Kiff. “I have complete faith that they will do a wonderful job with it.”