(Posted April 23, 2004)
Thanks to Randy of Beanieholics for sharing the following:
The
four-year fund-raising campaign for the new Sea Center on Stearns Wharf finished
with a flourish Thursday with the news that Beanie Baby magnate Ty Warner is
pitching in $1.5 million.
The revamped $8.1 million marine science education facility -- the most visible part of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History -- will now be called the Ty Warner Sea Center.
Mr. Warner, who owns the Four Seasons Biltmore
Hotel, the Coral Casino Beach Club, the San Ysidro Ranch and the Sandpiper Golf
Course but makes few public appearances, didn't turn out for a news conference
announcing his contribution, which wraps up the campaign. However, Greg Rice,
president of Ty Warner Hotels and Resorts, said the billionaire would be down at
the wharf in coming months, checking on the project's progress. Mr. Rice
promised that Mr. Warner would be at the official opening, set for early 2005.
Mr. Warner said in a statement he is excited
"to support a world-class learning program and facility."
Mr. Warner is among 112 donors to the Sea Center campaign, and his gift is the largest single contribution in the museum's history.
"Ty Warner helped us to wrap it (the fund-raising campaign) up eight months ahead of time," said Karl Hutterer, executive director of the museum. "There's nothing better than that."
Mr. Warner was apparently quite taken with plans for the center, which will offer visitors the chance to get their hands wet petting starfish, crawl through a tunnel in a tide pool and feel around in a dolphin's innards.
"When he finished flipping through the pages," Mr. Rice recalled, "he said, 'I'd like to finish off the campaign.' That's how quick of a decision it was."
Mr. Rice said it was "the interaction quality of the exhibits, the touch-and-feel" that hooked Mr. Warner.
"This is going to be the most unusual marine science exhibit anywhere," Mr. Hutterer promised. "It will be huge fun for both kids and adults."
The new center will be twice as big as the old one and should draw about 150,000 visitors annually. Museum representatives looked around at other facilities to learn how to break the mold.
One example: The center will install a plastinated dolphin. That's a real dead animal that's essentially been embalmed in plastic -- a technique developed by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who has awed audiences in Europe and Japan with displays of plastinated human corpses and body parts.
A candidate dolphin that died from domoic acid poisoning is already stowed in a freezer at the museum, though the staff is hoping to find a slightly smaller specimen.
Visitors will be able to reach inside the plastinated animal and explore its anatomy.
Other hands-on activities include a touch tank, where kids can pet sea creatures, and a water-quality assessment exercise in which visitors will lower a sampling device through a hole into the sea below Stearns Wharf, then take it to the center's lab.
"They can actually do a water-quality test and see if it's safe to go back to the beach and swim," said Justin Lassahn, project manager for the Sea Center revitalization.
The hole will also be used to deploy a remotely operated vehicle donated by Santa Barbara City College. It's a basic version of the contraptions that venture into places where humans can't, laying cables, nosing around shipwrecks and oil facilities and spying on life miles below the surface.
Images from the vehicle's camera will be displayed on a screen inside the Sea Center. Another ROV -- a broken-down commercial version -- will have its robotic eye trained on visitors.
There will also be a display museum staff like to call "whale karaoke," in which visitors can hear whale sounds, then have a go with their own renditions of a feeding whale, an aggressive whale or a courting whale. "American Idol's" Simon Cowell won't be on hand, but aspiring cetacean impersonators will be sized up by a computer, which is likely to be a lot more forgiving.
Upstairs, the "workshop" will showcase serious science. Local researchers from institutions such as UCSB and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary will be invited to set up there and show visitors what they've been up to.
Mr. Hutterer said that by offering so many hands-on opportunities -- what he calls "citizen science" -- he hopes the center will make visitors, particularly children, more aware of the abundance of life in the Santa Barbara Channel and the need to protect it.
So far, the concept seems to be going over well enough to snag someone who's made a very good living catering to kids.
Does Mr. Warner's contribution mean the center's gift store will be stocked with his plush creations?
Neither Mr. Rice nor Mr. Hutterer would say for sure.
"There might well be some Beanie Babies in the store that fit the theme," Mr. Hutterer allowed.
Ty Warner said in a statement that he is
excited "to support a world-class learning program and facility."
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