It’s hard to picture, but in less than a decade, an abandoned mobile-home park on Vandenberg Air Force Base property will transform into a massive visitors’ complex, celebrating the state’s space enterprise.
The California Space Center, a 71-acre project conceived by the Santa Maria-based nonprofit California Space Authority, is now blasting headlong toward reality after clearing a major hurdle.
On June 25, the U.S. Air Force released its Environmental Assessment Report, finding “no cumulative significant or adverse impacts” associated with the construction or operation of the project. The conclusion was based on a two-year Environmental Impact Report and a subsequent public review.
The approval process took longer than expected, according to Janice Dunn, deputy director of the CSA. Now that it’s done, however, the organization can focus its efforts on securing a 50-year lease with the Air Force Real Property Agency for the land.
“We achieved the result that we wanted to achieve,” she said. “It just took us a few more months than we expected.”
Federal law requires an “enhanced use” exception for the project, allowing the Air Force to lease its non-excess property to private industry. The statute also holds the possibility of extending the lease beyond 50 years. Dunn expects to have the lease finalized by the fall.
According to Lt. Ann Blodzinski, spokeswoman for Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing, base leaders support the CSA’s vision and goals for the center, and are looking ahead to the next stage of development.
“Vandenberg’s main part of CSA at this time is supporting the Enhanced Use Lease Program, which is an essential step in turning the CSC into reality,” she wrote in an e-mail.
According to Blodzinski, Vandenberg isn’t allowed to enter into a business arrangement with the CSA, which has to reimburse the federal government for any resources provided by the base.
Though the lease hasn’t been secured yet, the Space Authority has selected a master architect for the project: AECOM. Officials from CSA were aiming for a groundbreaking this October, but construction has been pushed out to the first quarter of 2011.
The project carries a hefty price tag: $220 million. To date, CSA has raised $3.5 million and recently hired a capital campaign consultant to help raise more. The CSA expects an additional $95 million from charitable donations and the balance to come from construction loans and grants. The group has already received a $150,000 grant from the state and has conditionally qualified for a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Patterned after the visitors’ complex at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, the California Space Center has its roots in 1998, when the CSA held its first strategic planning meeting on the project. The plan came after a series of 60 meetings, which included more than 300 space industry leaders.
The purpose of the center is simple, CSA’s Dunn said: education. The CSA hopes to inspire students to study STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—and to educate the public about space enterprise, history, and NASA’s mission in California.
Dunn said the project makes sense in a state that boasts three NASA centers, seven military bases with space assets, and commercial space operations in the Mojave Desert and Long Beach.
“Of course, because it’s in California, we have to make it bigger and better,” Dunn said.
Taking up a half-million square feet of building space, the center will be built over nine years in four phases. The first phase alone will cost about $62 million and will be finished by early 2013, the date of the park’s opening.
Attractions will include public tours of Vandenberg, a rocket park with missiles on display, an IMAX-style large-screen theater, education facilities, and an outdoor amphitheater with room for 2,000 visitors.
The center’s biggest draw, however, will be a launch viewing facility, offering the public a chance to experience all the sights and sounds of a real rocket launch from the base’s Space Launch Complexes.
Since only about a dozen launches happen each year at the base, not all visitors to the center will get to view one. However, Dunn said, that doesn’t mean everybody can’t share in the experience. In addition to viewing movies of launches, visitors will be treated to interactive games and museums housing space artifacts.
An on-site Chumash Cultural Center is also being proposed, but the CSA hasn’t reached a formal agreement with the tribe.
Besides education and entertainment, the project carries significant side benefits for the local economy. Feasibility studies estimate a $2.37 billion economic impact within the first 10 years of the center’s construction. The center will also house a Mission Support Complex for engineers and scientists, a facility expected to bring $280 million to the local economy.
The CSA also estimates nearly 3,000 new jobs will be created by 2020 as a result of the project—more than 1,700 of which will come as a direct result of the Space Center’s construction and operation.
An impact study by the company Delaware North pegs the center as receiving 200,000 visitors each year in 2013, and up to 500,000 annually by 2020. The CSA hopes to someday bring all fifth graders in California to the center; that grade level is when students are learning about the solar system and beginning to decide what areas of study to pursue.
“We’re a little organization, but we think big,” Dunn said. “It will be a wonderful opportunity not just for our locals, but for folks throughout the state.” m
Contact Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-22, 2010.