Bolsa center reborn

Visitors to Bolsa Chica Conservancy’s north entrance will notice lots of new things to teach them about the many natural resources of the wetlands — new exhibits, new facilities, an aquarium and a touch tank, all designed to educate them about the protected ecosystem.

Dozens of donors, volunteers, business and government figures gathered Monday afternoon for the reopening of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy Interpretive Center after a year of heavy remodeling. While the trailer is precisely the same size on the outside, the inside has been replaced from floor to ceiling.

“It’s critical that future generations learn about the crucial resources of the Bolsa Chica,” Huntington Beach Mayor Gil Coerper said. Coerper presented Bolsa Chica Conservancy board members with a commendation for their work.

Representatives of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, state Sen. Tom Harman, Assemblyman Jim Silva and County Supervisor John Moorlach also read commendations, while representatives of companies REI and Simple Green presented the conservancy with checks.

But the spotlight was on the new center.

“It’s a lot more user-friendly,” said Laura Bandy, the center’s education director. “It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s more informative, more modern-looking — definitely a lot cleaner-looking. It’s a much more professional look.”

The original center, built in a trailer in 1991, was only meant to last five years, Bandy said. But snags in the replacement process kept it around until 2 1/2 years ago, when the remodeling project began.

“I truly believe this building was only held together by paint in some places,” said conservancy board member Larry Brose, who works for the Newport Beach-based Robert Mayer Corp.

Executive Director Grace Adams called it the work of “a whole cast of characters,” from Bandy and her husband, who spent hundreds of hours on projects such as designing the aquarium, to multiple board members, including Brose, Boy Scouts, local businesses, individual volunteers, students and many others.

Eagle Scouts converted empty spaces under the staircases into storage sheds, since the permitting process to build a larger center would have been very difficult, Adams said.

By removing some office space, the center now has a dedicated classroom for student programs, which Adams said will keep the general public from “tripping over” children when classes are in session.

It will also allow much more involved lab-work, Bandy said.

“There were a lot of labs we wanted to do but held off on because they might make too much of a mess,” she said. “We can get a lot more hands-on.”

Speaking of hands-on, visitors now have a touch-tank full of local tide pool life they can explore with their fingers. Along with a 125-gallon aquarium, it brings much more indigenous life into the interpretive center, Adams said.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the number of students who come to the center — thousands each year, which never stopped even as the trailer was closed for construction.

“We took them out into the parking lot or out onto the trails,” Bandy said. “We’d do something at a classroom or in an assembly hall, then students would come here for the hike portion of the day.”

Still, Bandy said the center could not have been finished too soon; March and April will bring 500 to 800 schoolchildren to the wetlands, not counting adults who wander in on their own on their way to start a hike or watch the birds.