Morris plans hotel across from Bass Pro

When out-of-town visitors check out Bass Pro Shops or the Wonders of Wildlife museum, they may soon have a new place to stay very near the outdoor retailer's flagship location.

American Sportsman Holdings Co. - the parent company of the Johnny Morris-owned Bass Pro - is filing for rezoning at the 1900 block of South Campbell Avenue, across the street from the store.

According to a letter sent to members of the adjacent Seminole/Holland Neighborhood Association, the site plan calls for a five-story, 147-room "landmark" hotel fronting Campbell, with the possibility for commercial space at Campbell and Cherokee Street.

"We have carefully planned this proposed hotel with a commitment to superior design reflective of the character and history of this region, to be a significant cultural landmark for the city of Springfield and Missouri," Husch Blackwell Sanders attorney Richard Walters said in the letter.

City Principal Planner Mike MacPherson said a rezoning request has been filed for the property and a hearing will be held at the Planning and Zoning Commission's Aug. 6 meeting. He declined to comment further, saying city staff members are still in the process of putting together a staff report and recommendation for the commission.

The developers plan to meet with neighborhood homeowners July 13. Walters did not return calls seeking comment about the proposal.

Across the street

While the hotel plans are emerging, work continues on the Wonders of Wildlife museum, north of Bass Pro.

The museum has been closed since December 2007. A renovation that was originally scheduled to be a six-month project is now past the 18-month mark, and the initial $14 million price tag has ballooned to $25 million.

But the museum's executive director hopes the public will be willing to wait a little while longer for a renovation that has more than doubled in size since the facility closed less than two years ago.

"The wait will be worth it," said Executive Director Peggy Smith. "I know there is some skepticism out there because it has taken time, but what we will have in the end will be so wonderful that I think anyone who sees what we have done when we reopen will understand the delay."

The new scheduled opening date is fall 2010. The new-look museum will be more than 200,000 square feet, up from 126,000 square feet, and officials say the walking experience for visitors will be 93 percent longer due to more efficient use of interior space.

"We're also doing a complete renovation of the existing structure - adding exhibits and changing the customer flow, as well as renovating the wildlife galleries in the second floor of Bass Pro," Smith said.

New visitors

The biggest change will be a connector building between WOW and the neighboring Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. A glass-roofed structure will serve as both a museum lobby and home to a giant aquarium visible from both buildings - one more attempt to draw some of Bass Pro's estimated 4 million annual visitors to the museum.

Smith said that while initially museum officials wanted to keep the two facilities separate, connecting them only makes sense.

"Before, you'd have people come into Bass Pro and they'd see this big building over here, but they wouldn't know what we are or how to get there," Smith said. "So now when they're in the store, there will be an aquarium that they can see in the Bass Pro store that will encourage them to come over and see what we are."

The two facilities have always been financially connected; initial revenue bonds issued by the museum district in 1999 were paid off in large part because of more than $10 million in donations from Bass Pro's Morris, who also donated the land for the museum.

Renovations also include interior reshuffling for the Bass Pro store. Smith said the store plans to move its fishing department - its biggest customer draw - to the north end of the store to usher people toward the museum. The store also is moving its banquet facilities, currently housed in the White River Room, to space in the new connector building.

The museum has struggled to draw visitors since it attracted more than 405,000 attendees in 2002, its first full year of operations. Attendance steadily declined for the first three years until bottoming out around 220,000 in 2004, 2005 and 2006. WOW closed in late 2007, after bringing in just more than 180,000 visitors through November.

Smith said bringing customers back is a challenge for all museums and aquariums, which is why the museum will continue to look for traveling exhibit opportunities such as the albino alligator exhibit in 2005.

Nuts and bolts

A project of the magnitude and specialization of the WOW expansion requires more than one architecture firm.

Butler, Rosenbury & Partners worked on the exterior design of the facility, though Smith said that work is now complete. The current architect is museum and aquarium designer Peckham Guyton Albers & Viers Inc., whose Kansas City office is handling the interior layout. PGAV has performed design work for the Georgia Aquarium and Sea World sites. DeWitt & Associates is the general contractor for the Springfield project.

Funding for the $25 million project, Smith said, is coming from donations - including a $12 million pledge from Morris announced in April 2008. It's that donation that is largely responsible for the project delay, Smith said.

"When we originally closed and we were working on the construction project, we had not planned to do this large of a renovation project," Smith said. "Through (Morris') donation, it allowed us the chance to make this a much grander expansion and renovation, and it takes time to work through those plans."

The remaining $13 million came from a combination of donated money the museum already had and additional private donors whom Smith declined to name.

While the museum's renovation project may be funded by donations and gifts, the facility also receives state and local tax money.

WOW is part of a state museum taxing district that also includes Bass Pro and other neighboring businesses, which all charge an additional O-cent sales tax, and the museum also benefits from a K-cent of the city's hotel-motel tax.

City Finance Director Mary Mannix Decker said the museum received just more than $340,000 from its hotel-motel tax portion in fiscal 2009.

Roseann Bentley, a member of the WOW museum board, said that while she is concerned about how long the museum has been closed, she thinks people will understand - especially considering that many other commercial projects have been delayed or even cancelled because of the economy.

"It's worrisome any time you have to be closed for long periods of time and lose that momentum," she said. "But I'm convinced that when people realize the extent of the renovation and how beautiful it's going to be, we'll quickly exceed former attendance rates."