DRI officially opens the Frank H. Rogers Science and Technology Building today
Today is the official grand opening for the Desert Research Institute’s Frank H. Rogers Science and Technology Building in Las Vegas, a modern research structure representing a unique partnership among DRI, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office, the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation and Bechtel Nevada, NNSA's prime contractor for Nevada operations.
The 5:30 p.m. dedication of the new DRI facility will be hosted by DRI President Stephen G. Wells and Nevada Test Site Historic Foundation Chair Troy Wade. Featured speakers include Gov. Kenny C. Guinn; Gen. John A. Gordon, Homeland Security Advisor to the U.S. President; Linton Brooks, U.S. Undersecretary of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency Administrator; and Dr. Stavros Anthony, chair of the University and Community College System of Nevada Board of Regents.
The 66,000-square-foot Rogers Building more than doubles the office, laboratory and multiple use space at the institute’s Southern Nevada Science Center at Flamingo and Swenson streets. Dr. Wells said the building houses several new DRI environmental research programs and allow the institute’s southern Nevada campus to continue growing. DRI's Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management, or CALEM, its Frank Rogers Center for Environmental Remediation and Monitoring, or CERM, and the archaeologists and technicians in DRI's Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences who manage NNSA's NTS Cultural Resources Program, moved into the building this summer. The building's major tenant is the NNSA Nuclear Testing Archive, managed by Bechtel Nevada, containing NNSA's Nevada nuclear testing records. The historical foundation's Atomic Testing Museum, which will formally open next year, occupies part of the building's ground floor.
Wells said the naming of the building honors Frank H. Rogers who was the test site’s highly respected chief operating officer for its first decade. Rogers’ son, James Rogers, CEO of Sunbelt Communications Co. and one of America’s leading philanthropists, donated $3 million to the building project. Two-thirds of the Rogers donation is earmarked for construction of the new facility and build-out of the museum. With the remaining $1 million, DRI created CERM, the new interdisciplinary center dedicated to environmental contaminant detection and clean-up also named in honor of the senior Rogers.
The NNSA Atomic Testing Archive contains nearly half a million historic documents and records from more than 50 years of nuclear weapons testing and other operations at the Nevada Test Site. The archive's public reading room is named in honor of State Senator Dina Titus, a long-time scholar and critic of national weapons testing policy and Nevada Test Site operations who championed the project's legislative funding. DRI operates the artifact curation facility in the building for NNSA, preserving and interpreting hundreds of thousands of artifacts collected from NTS and related areas over several decades.
DRI's CALEM is a new DRI research initiative conducting a broad program of research in desert ecosystem management, sustainable development, stewardship, adaptive management, and restoration ecology, serving defense, municipal and industrial sponsors.
The building also contains the galleries, offices and exhibit space for the Nevada Test Site Historic Foundation’s Atomic Testing Museum, which has already gained affiliate status with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The museum’s NTS history exhibits will open about a year from now. The Atomic Testing History Museum will hold its first public preview event Saturday, Oct. 4, with a traveling exhibit, seminar, film premiere and book signing featuring former Sergei Khrushchev , son of former Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, and Francis Gary Powers, Jr., son of the American spy plane pilot who was shot down and captured during a May 1, 1960, U-2 flight over the Soviet Union.
The $13.1 million building was funded with $2.7 million in state appropriations, $8.4 million in state revenue bonds to be retired with revenues from tenant leases, institute funds, and a $2 million conventional loan.
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. More than 500 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 $37 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.