While the timeline for construction has been pushed back from its original plan, the new 5,000-square-foot free-standing exhibit hall at Mid-America Science Museum is on track for completion in early 2020.
According to Diane LaFollette, executive director, the original goal was to have the hall completed by Memorial Day weekend of this year, but she said several processes had to get underway following the voter approval of a bond issue in September. The Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission will use the proceeds from the existing 3-cent advertising and promotion tax that is levied on prepared food and lodging within the city limits of Hot Springs to repay the bonds.
"So that was the hope that since this is the 40th anniversary year that we could open it then," she said. "Obviously, that didn't happen, but it's still on track. Like a lot of things, it just takes longer than you think.
"What's happened now is we've raised the additional money, which is the $300,000 from the Oaklawn Foundation -- which is wonderful -- so that we can build it exactly the way that we need to and have the 5,000-square-feet of exhibit space."
On Tuesday, the Hot Springs Board of Directors approved the museum's contract with Bradford and Scruggs Construction Co. of North Little Rock. LaFollette said over the next few weeks the museum will complete necessary paperwork, meet with the contractors and construction committee, and finalize the timeline before hopefully breaking ground sometime in August.
"(We) don't know the date yet because all this paperwork is in place, but we're shooting for August and that means the building should get turned over to us in January or February of 2020," she said.
In September, museum officials said the facility would total 7,000 square feet with 2,000 square feet of that used for utilities. The most important aspect of the facility the museum needed to maintain was the 5,000 square feet of dedicated exhibit space, LaFollette said.
With the addition of the $300,000 grant, she said this will be possible while bringing the building up to city code.
"We needed a bathroom because it's big enough by code to need a bathroom and we wanted a warming kitchen, and then some storage," she said. "So when we got the bond money, we sat down with French Architects and B&F Engineering, and several other people and put our construction committee together and drew all our requirements for occupancy, and all the other things required for building that the experts know about.
"Come to find out that we needed a bigger bathroom than we thought we needed. We needed some more space for utilities -- the air conditioning and all the wiring and stuff that we wouldn't know. So it came out that we needed to expand the place just a little bit to maintain the 5,000 square feet of space. What that $300,000 is allowing is for us to keep that 5,000 square feet of exhibit space and still keep the building up to code. It was critical that we got that money because, like I said, the whole reason for it is so we would have enough room for substantial exhibits that you can't get anywhere else in the state. That $300,000 actually helps us meet the full budget and so now it's a $1.8 million project and we're good to go. We're super excited about it."
Some site prep by Entergy and the city have already taken place, LaFollette said.
"Once the bond issue was voted positively in September, the money was available to us by December and we thought that we could hit the ground running, but we learned that some things had to be put in place first," she said. "We're just excited and we wanted it just as soon as we can get it."
In the meantime, she said, the museum plans to assemble a task force to help choose the first exhibit to bring to the new space in summer 2020. The goal now is to have the facility open well before that time.
"That goal of having it open by Memorial Day weekend was really early on and we knew as time went on that we weren't going to be able to make that and it just kept getting pushed because of things that I'm learning throughout this process," she said. "As long as we have it open by summer 2020, we have time to plan a big exhibit and that's the ultimate goal. We have a big window between the time that we think we're going to get it and the time we're going to have an exhibit in there so we have lots of time to plan some fun events to put in there and those announcements will be coming out as we make the plans and finalize them."
LaFollette said the exhibits will be fun and engaging, and unlike other popular exhibits displayed elsewhere. The task force will follow a lengthy process looking at several criteria to ensure that, she said.
"What we'll do when we get the task force together is we'll have a list of some of the potential (exhibits) we could get," she said. "It depends on a lot of things like what's available. It depends on the size of exhibits that can go anywhere from 1,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet or more. ... The cost, of course, and if it's something we think our visitors would be interested in and it's something that we could use educationally.
"So it's not just 'Oh this would be cool.' There's a real way to really check out whether these would be something we would want to bring to Arkansas. There's some that have been around and most people have seen them. We don't want to bring those back necessarily. But there's a lot of new ones, some really fun ones out there."
Local on 07/06/2019