THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409220172
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
A $5 million capital fund drive for the Virginia Marine Science Museum expansion advanced to the halfway mark last week with a $250,000 pledge from resort innkeepers.
The Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association's board of directors voted to make the contribution, which will be used to defray the cost of exhibits for the museum.
At ground-breaking ceremonies last Friday for the $35 million expansion, Thomas R. Frantz, who heads the museum fund drive, announced eight other major contributors - companies or individuals who are donating more than $100,000 to the project.
In addition to the innkeepers, they are:
Landmark Communications Inc., parent company of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star; Tidewater Inn Management Co., a Virginia Beach company that operates a half-dozen Hampton Roads resort hotels; Home Quarters Warehouse, a hardware chain based in Virginia Beach; QED Systems Inc. of Virginia Beach, a defense contracting company; Wayne McLesky, a Virginia Beach real estate developer; R.G. ``Pete'' Bosher, a Virginia Beach businessman; Morris Fine, a Virginia Beach lawyer; and the estate of the late Celia Stern.
Construction is under way on the museum expansion and will add 80,000 square feet of floor space and more than 400,000 gallons of aquarium space.
Plans call for a separate 20,000-square-foot building at the south end of the 45-acre property for an aviary and marsh life exhibits, an IMAX theater with a six-story screen and a 300,000 gallon tank that replicates marine and plant life in the Norfolk Canyon, a deep-sea depression 60 miles off the Virginia Coast.
Also part of the project is a half-mile marsh trail connecting museum buildings and a live seal tank at the museum entrance.
Museum director C. Mac Rawls said construction should be completed and opened to the public in stages in 1996.
When the last addition is opened, the existing museum will be closed for six months for renovations.
The original building and the additions were designed by E. Verner Johnson, a Boston architect. New construction is being done by W.M. Jordan, a Newport News contractor who built Nauticus, the Virginia Air & Space Museum and the latest addition to the Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.
The project is the largest of the city's Tourism Growth Investment Fund initiatives to be undertaken. The fund is a revenue pool fed by special resort taxes and is earmarked for tourist-related construction over the next 10 years. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by IAN MARTIN
Frank Doczi, left, Gov. George Allen, and Morris Fine were among the
dignitaries participating in last Friday's ground-breaking for the
expansion of the Virginia Marine Science Museum.
by CNB