THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412070133
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 203 lines
IT'S MONDAY - FIVE days before opening - and the final touches are going on the new expanded Children's Museum.
City workers are putting snowflakes on two dozen Christmas trees around the Middle Street mall.
The owners of Earth Treasures are stocking the museum's gift shop with everything from personalized toothbrushes and 25-cent souvenirs to $100-plus sculptures.
Large pottery planters, painted electric blue, hold topiary gumdrop shrubs. Still to come are the giant lollipops and gingerbread men that will decorate the museum for Saturday's opening.
But on this day, a mechanic has packed his tool bag and he's looking for a staff member.
He's fixed the lights and sound on the police motorcycle parked on the make-believe city street where children will staff teller windows or sell goods from stocked market shelves.
``Who cares about that motorcycle?'' he calls out.
A deceptive hush hangs over the shadowed nooks and crannies of the museum. The children are missing.
Come Saturday morning that silence is destined to give way to the din of hundreds of chattering, squealing voices lost in the excitement of a paradise where grownups never say ``Don't touch.''
The kids will pull knobs, push buttons, climb onto fire engines and smear up the glass plasma ball.
This will be their world. A place where they will climb imaginary mountains, perform rescues on waterbed seas and reach out to the stars in one of the country's finest planetariums.
Already more than 1,000 children and adults have gotten sneak previews of the museum as test groups or participants of city and school employee days there, said M.E. ``Betty'' Burnell, museums director.
Everyone is excited and proud that Portsmouth has pulled off this gem of a museum, Burnell said.
There's been only one suggestion for improvement - more places where ``grownups'' can sit.
Visitors tell Burnell ``there's so many exhibits and so many things to do, the kids will never want to leave.''
As Shannon Rodriguez, a fifth-grader at John Tyler Elementary, put it: ``It's totally cool, and if you don't go you're missing something really awesome.''
Shannon is one of several students whose artistic critiques of the museum are now displayed in the ``Too Cool'' gallery of shiny-white refrigerator doors.
She knows a winner when she sees one. So did a lot of people.
People like Alexander Atkins, a 5-year-old Norfolk child, who liked the old Children's Museum so much that he broke his piggy bank twice to pitch in his dollars and coins to the new one.
People like the couple who gave $5,000 toward the museum as an anniversary gift to each other.
The largest single monetary donation came early on when the Beazley Foundation gave $475,000 for the planetarium.
``That was a big breakthrough for us,'' said Jean Oast, former chairman of the Museum and Fine Arts Commission.
Since then the list of people and organizations, from law firms to corporations, buying into the dream has grown longer and longer.
What I think is remarkable is few people have turned us down,'' said William B. Spong, chairman of the Portsmouth Museum Foundation. ``It's been a very saleable thing.''
The former U.S. senator and his late wife, Virginia, were asked to head fund-raising efforts in 1992.
Soon afterward, the Portsmouth Partnership had given enough money to legally set up a charitable foundation to accept donations. The partnership also paid for a professional fund-raising consulting group to advise the foundation.
The consultants advised first raising the $1.2 million the city had agreed to match for Phase I and later, after the museum had opened, to raise the $2 million for Phase II.
The Portsmouth Museum Foundation never had a campaign blitz and never sought publicity for its goals. But to date, its ``quiet'' fund-raising effort has netted more than $1.3 million.
Spong credits the ``cross-generational appeal'' of a Children's Museum that already had a proven track record in its smaller quarters in the 1846 Courthouse.
``I think for its size, it's attracted as many people as any museum in the United States,'' he said.
Many times, he said, he approached prospective donors in the business world to learn that they already were familiar with the museum. They had taken their children or grandchildren.
``People like to give to a winner,'' Spong said.
The Norfolk Foundation pledged $100,000. Another $25,000 came from the Celia Stern estate.
The Portsmouth Community Trust and Portsmouth Commerce Bank pledged $25,000 each.
The General Assembly appropriated $180,000.
The Portsmouth Kiwanis Club sponsored train excursions to raise money toward its $35,000 pledge. The Portsmouth-Chesapeake Association of Realtors held an art auction that raised $15,000 toward the rock-climbing exhibit.
The Portsmouth Service League gave the Art Moves exhibit and the Elizabeth River Garden Club provided money for the landscaping of Middle Street mall.
Museum volunteers raised more than $5,000 with yard sales and a lemonade brigade that operated during outdoor museum events.
A mother gave $20,000 in memory of her child; a gift earmarked for The City exhibit that her daughter had been so fond of at the original museum.
More than 100 donors gave a total of $8,000 in memory of Virginia Spong.
And most recently, A.J. ``Junie'' and Millie Lancaster gave the Museum Foundation their model-train collection valued at close to $1 million to be used on the second floor when it is completed.
The gift was especially appropriate for an old seaport city like Portsmouth.
``At one time there were nine different railroads coming into Portsmouth,'' Spong said. ``Portsmouth's slogan when I was a boy was `Where rail meets sail.' ''
Besides saving money on the number of exhibits needed in the second phase, excitement about the extensive train collection could speed up future fund-raising.
Oast didn't need to see the inventory book to know what a treasure the collection was.
``We have a grandson who believes that the finest creation that man or God ever did is Trainland,'' she said, referring to the Lancasters' current exhibit on Shoulders Hill Road in Suffolk.
Oast, who has been a supporter of the Children's Museum since its beginning 14 years ago, never dreamed then that it would one day be something the whole city would get behind as one of its greatest assets.
But once she had seen the mock-up plans for the new museum, she never doubted it either.
``This one is exciting as anything I've ever seen and the space is incredible,'' she said. ``We're so fortunate that Leggett sold the building and I'm so proud of this city . . . the city manager and the council for being farsighted enough to support this museum.''
Burnell remembers the first time she walked into the former Leggett Department store after it had been gutted.
``It was before they had started the installation of the planetarium and it was just this big enormous cavern,'' she said. ``It was dark and your footsteps echoed on the concrete floor and I wondered how in the world we were ever going to build this up.''
Before long, a rainbow of color settled over the store. People were curious and eager to get inside.
``Probably the most touched I have been was on the afternoon of Media Day,'' Burnell said. ``Everybody who had been involved in the project - the architects, the engineers, the museum staff, the exhibit fabrication company - we were all there.
``And it was like there was a point . . . when we looked around at each other and said, `This is it. We've done it.' ''
Now the worst part of Burnell's job seems to be wondering what to expect when the doors open at 10 a.m. Saturday.
The museum will be operating with a full staff and will be prepared to keep waiting children busy making ornaments, face painting and balloon sculptures.
Burnell was guarded about making predictions of the people who will be in that waiting line Saturday and in weeks to follow.
In keeping with the Museum Foundation's quiet fund-raising efforts, Burnell would rather see the museum surprise people with its success.
Meanwhile, she's handling the suspense like most people.
``I have no fingernails left on either hand.'' MEMO: Related story on page 11.
AT A GLANCE
The new Children's Museum of Virginia is located in a former Leggett
department store building at 221 High St. with the main entrance on
Middle Street Mall and the student entrance on Queen Street across from
the Children's Museum of Virginia Parking Garage. For information, call
393-8393
HOURS OF OPERATION: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week; extended on
Friday until 9 p.m. Earth Treasures, a gift shop in the museum, will be
open at the same time.
FEES: $3 per person for non-members to visit the Children's Museum
(includes planetarium show). $5 per person for Key Pass to visit four
city-owned museums, including the Children's Museum.
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FEES: Individual, $20 ($25 after Jan. 1); students
and senior citizens, $15; family membership for admission of four
persons, $25 ($35 after Jan. 1).
CLASSES: Admission is free to Portsmouth classes; $3 per student for
out-of-town students. (Teachers should call museum at 393-8393 for free
admission of indigent students.) Classes must pre-schedule visits to
ensure space.
GUIDES: The staff has increased from eight to 30 persons to ensure
that at least 14 guides and interpreters are working on the first floor
around the exhibits when the museum is open. Guides will be stationed at
each exhibit at all times of operation.
DIRECTIONS: From Interstate 264, take Crawford Street exit and turn
left on County Street. From Midtown Tunnel take London Boulevard to
Downtown and turn right onto Crawford Street. Turn right onto County
Street to enter parking garage in 300 block and adjacent to museum.
Directional signs will be posted to guide visitors.
PARKING: Children's Museum of Virginia Parking Garage in the 300
block of County Street is adjacent to the museum. Parking available on
first floor at rate of 15 cents for 30 minutes. Another parking garage
fronts on Crawford Street nearby and can be entered from Water Street.
Visitors also may park free for two hours in non-metered spaces on High
Street and in metered spaces on other nearby streets.
OTHER TRANSPORTATION: The Elizabeth River Ferry operates between
Waterside and Downtown Portsmouth every 30 minutes. The tunnel bus runs
regularly from Waterside; passengers disembark on County Street at the
Children's Museum Parking Garage. Call Tidewater Regional Transit at
640-6300 for specific times, which vary on some days. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Mark Mitchell, Staff
Come Saturday morning, the silence at the Children's Museum of
Virginia is destined to give way to the din of hundreds of
chattering, squealing voices lost in the excitement of a paradise
where grownups never say ``Don't touch.''
by CNB