OUR LAGUNA:Many hands built new nature center

If compliments were currency, a lot of people would have been richer by far when they left the dedication of the Nix Nature Center on Saturday.

Speakers praised everyone connected to the fundraising, design and construction of the 2,000-square foot center — especially Rosemary and James Nix, who donated the seed money for the $3.4-million project.

“They say a little bit of money goes a long way, but I never thought $500,000 could do so much,” James Nix said.

The Nixes first talked to Laguna Canyon Foundation leaders seven years ago about funding an educational facility.

“Now it is a reality,” James Nix said. “My hope is that people will be enticed to go more deeply into the park to enjoy the peace and tranquility. I hope there will be many field trips for children, especially those who have few opportunities to see the natural land.”

The Nixes’ son, Paul; their daughter, Elaine Roth; “grand-daughter-in-law,” Vanda; and great-grandchildren Jackson, 4, and Luke, three months, were among the 400-plus audience who gave the Nixes a standing ovation.

“This is a big, big day for my parents,” Roth said.

The opening of the center — which features multimedia, interactive displays, fossil-embedded rocks, recordings, projected images artifacts and art — drew busloads of folks that boarded at the Quail Hill Trailhead in Irvine, Clubhouse 3 in Laguna Woods Village and the parking lot at Laguna College of Art & Design. As always, park activities attracted people from communities throughout the county.

“Our bus was almost full, and we didn’t recognize anyone,” said Lagunan Bette Anderson, who attended the dedication with husband, Ken.

Marianne O’Barr and Raymond Persinger came from Mission Viejo, but they are not strangers to Laguna. He is director of sculpture at Laguna College of Art & Design. She teaches lower-level sculpture. But it was the first visit to the park for their children, Kathleen, 10, Rachael, 8, and Nathaniel, 5.

Laguna College of Art & Design President Dennis Power spoke at the dedication of the role the college played in the “pARTnership” that produced the center.

“It’s been observed by others that the most observant [people] are naturalists and artists,” Power observed.

The college draws on its location in the canyon for inspiration, he said.

“Nature and art evolve,” foundation President Michael Pinto said. “The interpretative center is not static, and it will continue to evolve.”

Paintings by local artists Jacobus Baas and Ken Auster hang on the solid interior walls, never competing with the views of the park framed by the picture windows. Sculptor Delvin Charles Hanson’s interpretation of bats in sycamore trees was inspired by the real thing outside the center.

“I was here all night installing it,” Hanson said.

Laguna College graduate Katy Betz came up with the concept of the “Full Circle” mural that shows how the land went from wilderness to Native American habitat to ranch land and back now to wilderness.

The 8- by 32-foot mural project took two years and teamwork by Laguna College art students and faculty from concept to installation.

“I hadn’t seen the mural before, and I am thrilled,” said City Councilwoman Jane Egly, a member of the Greenbelt Authority, which oversees the park.

Interpretive panels and art, a donor recognition courtyard and a painter’s pier for artists, are featured on the exterior of the building that Nix described as beautiful and imaginative.

“The architecture is creative — the building sits so elegantly on the land,” said Jeanette Heartwood, an opening day volunteer at the center’s information booth — along with Guine Breeding of the foundation staff.

A nearby one-half mile loop trail — a gift from the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve Trust to the foundation — invites the most cautious of visitors out into the park. Supervisor Tom Wilson announced Saturday that the trail will be named Mary’s Trail in honor of Mary Fegraus, longtime foundation executive director.

A stunned Fegraus also was given a standing ovation by the audience.

“I have always said that Mary is the heart and soul of what we do,” Pinto said. “Now we have to add — she’s also the brains.”

“We have created something greater here than the sum of its parts,” Pinto said in praise of the partnership. “It doesn’t stop. It is life-renewing.”

Orange County Harbors Beaches and Parks Director Kevin Thomas greeted the guests at the dedication.

“This wonderful collaboration is an example of a true partnership,” Thomas said. “I am proud to have a small part in it.”

Thomas called the center “the house that James and Rosemary, Mary, Michael and Tom built,” referring to the Nixes, Fegraus, Pinto and outgoing Fifth District Supervisor Wilson.

The partnership at the county level also included Scott Thomas and Supervisor Bill Campbell, who spoke at the dedication.

“Tom picked my pocket,” Campbell said. “He wanted money from me so he could get this done before he left office.”

Campbell agreed to temporarily move some money out of his district to make funds available for a project he saw as valuable to the county.

“Our focus is on how to how to make open space accessible and how to preserve it,” Campbell said.

Wilson said he sometimes wondered if the project would be completed before he termed out, if ever.

“The clock ticked and ticked and ticked and ticked some more, and I thought it might not happen on my watch,” Wilson said.

“Every day, I expected a phone call from Rosemary and Jim asking where they could find the fountain of youth, if the [project] was gonna take much longer.

“It was no one’s fault, just the usual challenges, and here we are. The [center] stands as a testament to what a public/private partnership can do. I am pleased to have participated. Thanks and congratulations to all of you. Way to go.”

Park rangers Barbara Norton and Larry Sweet, groundskeeper Francisco Morales; center architects; the artists whose work is exhibited inside and outside of the center, their project instructor, Mia Tavonatti and their supervisor college Dean Gary Birch also came in for kudos, as did volunteers.

Foundation Director of Education Kimberly Bixler Leeds coordinated the Laguna Greenbelt Inc. volunteers for the dedication, including Ed Fry and Bob Josephson. All three are Red Hats, the first class of docents taught by Greenbelt President Elisabeth Brown, which also included Eleanor Henry, Thomas and his wife, Julie, Niko Ferris, Tito Fuentes, “Corky” Smith, Alan Schoenherr and Lennie Vincent.

Joyce Perry, a member of the foundation’s interpretive exhibit design team, shared the creation story of the Achachemen tribe of Native Americans, one-time inhabitants of the canyon.

Ceremonies at the park traditionally conclude with the release of a wild bird that has been nursed back to health. The good news was that no ailing birds were in captivity. The bad news was that Fegraus had to come up with a fitting finale. But first she paid tribute to the supporters of the park whose spirits she said must also be applauding the center.

“When the park was dedicated in 1993, we honored Jim Dilley, but others have since passed away: Barbara Stuart, Betty Fleming, Esther Burnett, Louise Fleenor and Kim Gould,” Fegraus said. “I know their spirits are here today praising us.”

In conclusion, backed by the Friends of the Laguna Beach Concert Band brass trio of Angela Romero, Brent Anderson and Laura Griffiths, Fegraus recited an excerpt from the short story “Mrs. Mobry’s Reason,” written by Kate Chopin (1851-1904), that is engraved on the wall of the center:

“I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth subtleties, of major and minor chord (sic) that the wind the strikes upon the tree branches.

“Have you ever heard the earth breathe...?”

In the audience: reelected incumbent council members Toni Iseman and Elizabeth Person-Schneider, former City Clerk Verna Rollinger, Marlene and Greenbelt board member Wayne Ybarra, Cindy Prewitt, Diane Reed, Trudy Josephson, Festival of Arts board member John Hoover, former mayors Wayne Peterson and Ann Christoph, Liza Stewart, Harry Huggins, Steve Miller, Carolyn Wood and Eric Jessen.