THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606200639
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: SPECIAL EDITION: A VISITOR'S GUIDE TO THE EXPANDED VIRGINIA MARINE
SCIENCE MUSEUM
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 93 lines
The building that now sits on the muddy banks of Owls Creek didn't start out anywhere near as grand. In fact, the original plan had more to do with storing school science materials than anything approaching a 300,000-gallon fish tank and an IMAX 3-D theater.
Back in 1973, C. Mac Rawls, now the museum's director, worked for the Virginia Beach school district as a principal at Fairfield Elementary School. He had a friend at Cox High School, science teacher Don Ives, who wanted to set up a science resource room, a place where exhibits and aquariums could be stored when not used.
E.E. Brickell, who was Virginia Beach school superintendent at the time and is now president of Eastern Virginia Medical School, set up a science museum committee to look into the matter and appointed Rawls as chairman.
``What we came up with was a general science museum along the lines of a school facility,'' Rawls says. ``It had a library as its center with four spokes. Each spoke was devoted to an area of science: biology, earth sciences, physical science and astronomy.''
Their efforts produced an idea that was far grander than anything the school district could realistically house.
``What we came up with really didn't have any place to go,'' Rawls says. ``The school system was overcrowded as it was.''
At about the same time, the city was looking into the idea of forming a science museum, an idea that grew out of an initiative advanced by state legislators to build a series of science museums around Virginia. Each region was to have its own museum, with Virginia Beach focusing on marine science and a central facility located in Richmond, Rawls says.
``That idea fizzled out too,'' Rawls says.
But what came from it was money - about $30,000 - which the city turned around and used to fund its Museum Feasibility Committee in 1975. Its members produced a master plan that called for a museum to be built in Seashore State Park.
``We were going to combine the resources of the park with a museum that would have been almost like a very sophisticated visitor's center,'' Rawls says. ``We thought we had full park support. However, after we went through all the expense of compiling the plan, the park's board turned it down.
The committee disbanded. But in 1978, then-Del. Owen B. Pickett, now a member of Congress, got $50,000 in state funding to study the feasibility of creating a museum.
To take advantage of the money, Brickell and former City Manager George Hanbury agreed to have Rawls remain as a school employee but serve on a new committee that would look into a possible site for a museum that had no real mission and no funding.
With Rawls' help, a new committee picked the Owls Creek site. They set up a public partnership with the city and created a foundation. A contract was awarded to an architect in 1980 to design a facility.
But the problems were nowhere close to being solved.
``The saddest moment of my life was in 1981, during a session of the General Assembly, when we were passed over for museum funding and the Cousteau Society received $1.2 million, Rawls says. The morning paper never said a word about us.''
So they did what any enterprising group would do: They called a press conference to plead their case.
``We wanted some recognition and, you know, it really worked,'' Rawls says. ``People came forward with support. The next year, Owen Pickett led the fight and we got $2 million, more than anyone could recall a museum ever getting before.''
The city then chipped in $4 million, and the new museum foundation raised $2 million more. What they built would become one of the most popular museuems in the state.
But there were problems. The $8.3 million museum opened 11 months past its expected completion date, the result of construction flaws and constant change orders.
After it finally opened in June 1986, attendance was 45 percent higher than expected that summer, with about 109,000 people walking through the front doors during the first three months.
Over the years, the projected attendance of more than 300,000 visitors a year has been met or exceeded consistently.
Two years ago, work began on a $36.7 million expansion that would triple the size of the facility.
Money for exhibits, $5 million, was raised privately. The remainder of the funding came from the city, which owns the museum, to pay for construction of buildings and other improvements.
Parts of the expansion, notably the Owls Creek Marsh Pavilion and marsh trail, opened in January.
``It shows me that good ideas finally do succeed,'' Rawls says.
``I think we have a good idea here in our purpose to increase people's knowledge of Virginia's marine environment. It's a very worthy thing.''
ILLUSTRATION: MORT FRYMAN / The Virginian-Pilot
THE IMAX 3-D MOVIE THEATER UNDER CONSTRUCTION IN APRIL 1995. by SS