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March 27, 2008

Children’s Museum’s new building design calls for two less stories for hotel space

Total cost of project up to $5.4M from $4.8M

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — Foundation work is scheduled to begin in two weeks for the newly redesigned Terre Haute Children’s Museum, to include a “smart classroom 98-seat theater,” at Wabash Avenue and Eighth Street.

Instead of a six-story building matching the exterior design of the next-door Candlewood Suites, now under construction, the revised plan is a four-story building with its own identity of glass, brick, limestone and multi-colored two-story banners, said Bill Hann Jr., vice president and senior estimator for Thompson Thrift Construction Inc., which will build the exterior shell of the museum.

Total project cost for the new museum has risen to $5.4 million from $4.8 million. The museum’s total square footage under the new design increases to 25,600 square feet from about 22,000. The museum will have 12,500 square feet of exhibit space, about six times more than its current location near Wabash Avenue and Sixth Street.

The fourth floor of the museum building will be part of the Candlewood Suites and contain about 9,300 square feet of residential occupancy space. The museum and hotel will not be accessible from the other facility.

The four-story building design represents a savings of about $250,000 for the museum in building expense and about $300,000 for Candlewood Suites, Hann said.

“We took the design out to bid and it was considerably over budget for both the museum and Candlewood. Predominantly, the six stories pushed the project into needing three emergency stairs that went six floors down, along with the enclosure of those staircases, doorways and concrete,” Hann said.

“Also, when you have six floors, you have six floors of exterior wall to build, so after a considerable amount of brainstorming … we looked at can we get the same number of rooms by stacking floors five and six down to one level on the fourth floor?” Hann said.

Candlewood’s architect, Dimensions Inc., made a new floor plan. The hotel lost two rooms, but gained some larger rooms, said John Thompson, co-founder of Thompson Thrift. The hotel will have 16 rooms on the fourth floor.

Another benefit going to a four-story design, Thompson said, is fireproofing the entire steel structure is not required, Thompson said. “We also wanted to have open ceilings and we weren’t allow to do that with a six-story design.”

MMS Architectural Engineering in Terre Haute designed the new exterior and will design the interior of the museum, Hann said.

The foundation work will take about a month to complete, then once structural steel arrives, work will continue, with the building shell completed by the end of September, Thompson said.

The idea is to build the exterior shell before proceeding with interior and exhibit work, to make sure there is money to complete the project, Thompson said.

“We have fallen prey to higher material costs,” Thompson said. “We still have a long way to go. We have raised $3.8 million. We are stepping out here and doing the right thing by moving forward, but our job is not complete. We still have to raise well over a million dollars. Before we will release exhibit construction, we have to raise additional funds.

“If we get the shell constructed and fundraising goes great, it will be a seamless process. But if we get the shell constructed and we are not as successful in fundraising as we hoped, it may stretch out our process a bit. But we are not going to spend dollars we have not got committed to the project. We can’t strap the project and move forward with debt that is not secured by a pledge,” Thompson said.

Under the new design, the first floor will have 3,985 square feet of exhibit space, with three event rooms for birthday parties, labs and other science activities and restrooms. The second floor will have 4,505 square feet of exhibit space, restrooms and an open area looking down on the first floor at the south end of the building. That allows for large vertical exhibits, Hann said.

The third floor will have a 98-seat theater, plus museum offices, conference area and restrooms.

“We are looking at this [theater] being a smart-classroom environment so that there is high technology in here so we can do some interesting things. We have some 3-D theater ideas and video streaming as part of that,” Hann said.

Hann said an additional idea is try to link with the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center in Indianapolis.

“Our school system here in Vigo County, and in surrounding counties, spend a lot of money annually sending kids to Indianapolis to probably one of the world’s greatest children’s museum and the Ruth Lilly learning experience is world-class over there [in Indianapolis],” Hann said.

“I think we are trying to provide something in a regional center that we can get some of those kids, if not all, to come to Terre Haute and use our facility as a way to help teach that message because not every school corporation can afford to send their kids to Indianapolis,” Hann said.

Stephen Schrohe, managing member of Culp Ventures LLC that is marketing the museum, said as a general rule, a criticism of the museum had been the exhibits did not match the curriculum of the kids.

“We have gone to great lengths to befriend the academic community and try to tie things into what the kids have to learn in first, second and third grades and have gotten super cooperation,” Schrohe said.

Hann said museum displays may be changed annually or biannually, depending on cost. “We don’t want to become stale,” he said.

Hann referred to a display of life-sized dinosaurs by the museum in 1998, which attracted 45,000 visitors. “We know that if we can provide a good product, a good exhibit and good learning experience, people will come to see it,” Hann said.

Thompson said the museum plans to have a yet-to-be-determined “signature exhibit,” such as in the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, with its large water clock.

Schrohe said the museum is continuing with its fundraising, with the largest project being the sale of bricks to be used in the museum’s construction. So far, bricks have generated about $100,000, he said.

Hann and Schrohe said they are hopeful for donated materials and workmanship. As an example, a Terre Haute paint company, Hann said, has asked to donate paint for the project and a sign company seeks to donate signage.

Fundraiser bricks and limestone blocks will be placed along the Eighth Street side of the museum, while “kids bricks” will be placed in the alley south, behind the museum, in a drop-off zone for children, Hann said.

The bricks and blocks can be bought at the museum’s Web site, www.terrehautechildrensmuseum.com.



Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

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