DRI holds groundbreaking for Southern Nevada Science Center Phase II
The Desert Research Institute will hold formal groundbreaking ceremonies Saturday for Phase II of its Southern Nevada Science Center in Las Vegas, a $13.1 million addition of 66,000 square feet of laboratory, office, archival and museum space on the institute's Las Vegas campus. DRI President Stephen G. Wells said the project was a unique partnership including the University and Community College System of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation (NTSHF).
"These organizations have combined to develop a resource that will advance DRI's environmental research and historical preservation while enhancing the public discussion and dissemination of information about the nation's nuclear testing program during the Cold War," Wells said. He added that DRI's research programs in archaeology and arid lands environmental management will also be housed in the new facility, resolving a serious space shortage for DRI on its southern campus. He noted that DRI has conducted environmental research on the test site since the 1960s.
U.S. Senator Harry Reid, who has been a long-time supporter of the joint programs
to be located in the facility, will be the key speaker for the event. Reid will
also introduce Lawrence M. Small, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
which has granted affiliate status to the museum to be operated in the facility
by the NTSHF.
A half million dollar pledge to the foundation from Mrs. Herbert Grier, widow
of one of the founding partners in the test site's long running prime contractor,
EG&G, Inc., is also being announced by the foundation and DRI Saturday.
The gift will help the foundation develop interpretive exhibits and displays
of memorabilia from the half century of activities on the Nevada Test Site.
The 8,000-square-foot museum will feature exhibits depicting the Cold War role of the Nevada Test Site in southern Nevada, placing it in context within American daily life and current affairs during that period. An additional 2,000 square feet of museum space will be dedicated to traveling exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution and other entities.
The archives will be available for use by scholars, historians and the general
public, and staffed by professional archivists from DOE's Coordination and Information
Center (CIC). CIC will move more than 350,000 documents and records compiled
in more than 50 years of nuclear weapons testing to the new facility from their
present location at DOE's Nevada Operations Office in North Las Vegas.
In anticipation of the new facility, the CIC has been collecting relevant documents
and other records from other federal agencies, test site contractors and private
individuals for inclusion in the archives. The collection may total a half million
items by the time the new historical research resource opens next summer.
State Senator Dina Titus, a UNLV political science professor who has been a longtime scholar and critic of U.S. nuclear testing policies administered by DOE, supported the consolidation of the test site archives in a central, easily accessible facility at DRI. She introduced legislation to authorize the state to issue revenue bonds for the project. Clark & Sullivan Constructors, Inc., is the general contractor for the project, which was designed by JMA Architects. Completion is expected in summer 2003.
Funding for the project comes from $2.5 million in state capital improvement appropriations, $8.4 million in state revenue bonds to be retired by a 20-year lease with the U.S. government for the DOE archival space, and private bank loans obtained by DRI. The Phase II project is part of a master plan for DRI's 11-acre Las Vegas campus approved by the University and Community College System Board of Regents in 1988.
A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System
of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental
research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 400 full- and
part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research
projects at DRI annually. More than 85 percent of DRI's annual $33 million operating
budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists.
The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.