Wildlife museum abruptly enters delayed expansion

The expansion comes as the National Fish and Wildlife museum enters its seventh month without a permanent director and faces its first drop in attendance in three years.

Beginning Dec. 3, the museum’s expansion project will bring the facility’s size to more than 150,000 square feet, from 92,000 square feet, and connect WOW with Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World on the shared campus at Campbell Avenue and Sunshine Street.

WOW spokesman Gary Ellison said the project would cost $14 million; Butler, Rosenbury & Partners is the project architect, and DeWitt & Associates is the general contractor.

The addition, approved by the museum board at its November meeting, will include a large reflecting pool flanking the aquarium and an expanded Wildlife Galleries section on Bass Pro’s mezzanine level.

The museum will be closed during construction, which will create a new entrance atrium and ticket sales area and will remodel the animal exhibits and galleries.

(Click here for a map of the planned construction at Wonders of Wildlife.)

Changing plans

The final design is the latest incarnation for a plan more than four years in the making. The original, announced in September 2003, would have added 18,000 square feet among six stories, connected to Bass Pro and cost $7 million. That design was later expanded to build 60,000 square feet of exhibit space between the two facilities.

“We’ve been working on the appropriate design for quite a long period,” Acting Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Peggy Smith said. “We wanted to make sure that whatever design we landed on would be the most effective for drawing more visitors into the museum and providing the best possible experience that we could for the visitors.”

Both of those previous plans featured an adjacent IMAX theater, which was scrapped, according to spokesman Ellison, because London-based theater developer Bella Films fell on hard times.

WOW Foundation Board Vice Chairman Lee Gannaway said earlier incarnations of the expansion were not as focused on the theater as had been reported.

“The IMAX was not going to be part of the museum – it was just going to be on site,” he said. “It was a separate, free-standing building that we thought would have increased traffic to the museum.”

He added that he doesn’t think the delays have created a significant increase in the project cost because of the current conditions in the construction market.

“I think there’s more contractors looking for work to do than there are jobs to do, with the downturn in the housing market and construction,” Gannaway said. “I don’t think it’s increased the price of the project like it would have a few years ago.”

The expansion is funded through private donations collected during the last four years.

The work could act as a needed shot in the arm for museum attendance, which totaled nearly 169,000 visitors through October – down 17.2 percent compared to the same period in 2006.

If the trend continues, it would be the first year the museum has experienced an overall drop in attendance since 2004. The museum never has hit original market-study projections of 900,000 visitors a year.

The expansion is timed to coincide with the museum’s slow period; Smith said the summer is the busiest season, with July usually bringing the most visitors.

“December, January and February are our slowest months,” she said.

“We’re working to make sure we have the construction done in time to be reopened for that main tourism season,” Smith added.

Changing faces

The museum’s physical shakeup also includes personnel alterations.

While the museum is closed for up to six months during construction, eight full-time and 19 part-time employees will have to find temporary employment. Smith said the museum is helping to place those employees, and all will be invited back to work when renovations are complete.

Smith herself is indicative of the changes – she has been serving as the museum’s acting executive director since Tony Schoonen left the position in May. He is now chief of staff for the Boone and Crockett Club in Missoula, Mont.

Gannaway, who is leading an executive search committee, said the group is still in the process of finding the right person.

“We’ve gone through 60 to 80 résumés, and we’ve interviewed three people, and we’re still looking,” he said, adding that there isn’t a specific timetable to fill the position. “We’d like to have had someone before now; perhaps in our effort to find the exact right person, we’ve been too particular. We just don’t want to make a mistake.”

Gannaway said finding someone who will offer longevity for the museum is important; the museum has had four directors, including current acting director Smith, since it opened six years ago.

He also doesn’t anticipate that the ongoing director search will put a damper on the expansion project.

“Ideally, we would have that person here who could be involved in it, to know what’s going where,” he said. “But there really aren’t any decisions for that person to make.”

He added that the intricate knowledge of the building is more important to the museum’s director of operations, Clifford Clark, who has been with the museum for at least three years.