New visitor center would be built close to current buildings

Jay C. Hormel Nature Center staff and community volunteers have chosen a site for the nature center’s new visitors center.

A group of staff, Friends of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center board members, Parks, Recreation and Forestry board members and interested citizens agreed Wednesday that a new visitors center should be built north of the maintenance shed, which is close to existing nature center buildings.

“We got together two different groups and then we had the maps and we took the scale of buildings, the size of them, and actually applied them to a map that corresponded,” said Larry Dolphin, executive director of the nature center. “We wanted to determine what site would be most favorable.”

Nature Center leaders previously discussed a site on the far southwest edge of the property near Interstate 90. The decision to go with the site closer to existing buildings came as part of a group session led by the I&S Group, an architectural firm, to find out what should go into a new Nature Center visitors center.

The group also gave input on what a new building should do for the community.

“It should be a destination for children for environmental education,” said Austin City Council Member Roger Boughton. “And it should also be a destination for adults to come to Austin.”

Staff also told the architect that more space was important, as nature center programs are expanding despite tight space at the current visitors center.

This is the first of several meetings architects will have with nature center volunteers, staff and city officials to nail down more details on the building, according to Dolphin. If all goes well, the friends of the nature center board could decide to move forward with the project at the end of May or early June.

The current visitors center was dedicated in 1975, yet the building is in the Austin Municipal Airport’s flight path, which means nothing can be built or rebuilt on that building. Electrical problems found last summer concerned nature center officials and spurred research on a new building.

Nature Center officials will look at potential exhibits on natural history, conservation and other subjects inside the new visitors center as well.

Though Dolphin had initially hoped to kick off a fundraising campaign for the building on Earth Day, April 22, he said the group would have to back off of that goal for now as Nature Center staff wanted to get more details together before going public with a campaign.

The project could get started as soon as 2016, though Dolphin said construction could be pushed back to 2017 depending on how soon the nature center raises donations. The project is estimated to be about 14,000 square feet and could cost $3.5 to $4.5 million, but Dolphin said the architect would help determine the project’s scope and costs. The new visitors center will also use as many energy saving concepts as possible to become sustainable.