$17.5-Million Expansion : Space Theater Hopes to Double Present Size

The Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in Balboa Park plans a $17.5-million expansion by 1989 that would double its existing space and incorporate some of the newest in film technology.

“We’re looking for a dream that will take us into the future--into the 21st Century,” Executive Director Jeffery W. Kirsch said Tuesday. “This will put us at the cutting edge, in many, many ways. As it is, we have the smallest space theater and science center of any in America.”

The space theater and science center, which when it opened in 1973 was the first of its kind in America, has outgrown existing space and will soon be hard-pressed to host the 670,000 visitors who pass through its doors each year, Kirsch said. He hopes that by doubling it size, the center can accommodate 1 million visitors a year.

The plan, which must be approved by the City Council has problems, however.

Funding Not Set

“We do not now have complete funding in place,” he said. “We’re developing a funding package, including private contributions and some type of (private) bond program. Taxpayers’ money won’t be involved.”

Kirsch also conceded that there could be opposition to the proposal by environmentalists, many of whom favor increased open space in the park and have opposed further building plans. Recent examples include opposition to construction of the Old Globe Theatre’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Stage and the Navy’s new hospital in Balboa Park.

“Of course, we’re going to submit our plans for environmental scrutiny,” Kirsch said. “The project will be up for public review within a 45-day period. Our intention is to get public feedback. We welcome it. If there are problems with our dream, we want to know. We’ve designed something we think everyone can be thrilled with.”

Peter Rodi, head of the San Diego architectural firm Designbank, is designing the expansion.

“With any public matter, in any public forum, yeasayers and naysayers always emerge,” Rodi said. “And everyone is 100% justified in their emotion.”

Rodi said the expansion would “not greatly compromise” the landscape nor appreciably alter the aesthetics of the current structure. He has planned for additional mass-transit space, which he said was desperately needed.

“I used the existing structure as a core,” he said, describing the blueprints. “We put a little bit here, a little bit there. We’ll add a ‘supercinema’ here, put a ‘simulation theater’ on the second floor, up and over here, to distribute people throughout the facility. In other words, expansion won’t be stacked on one end of the building. It will happen throughout, cohesively, with balance as a key.”

Kirsch detailed the plan as including an outdoor science park; a simulation theater resembling “Star Tours” at Disneyland; a supercinema similar to the Showscan technology now being shown at the center; a teaching planetarium, and expanded educational facilities. All are needed, he said, to bring the center up to date as well as thrust it into the future.

Kirsch described Showscan and the supercinema technology as using 70-millimeter film but with images recorded and shown at 60 frames per second (as opposed to the conventional 24 frames per second seen in movie theaters). Such technology calls for a much-larger-than-normal screen.

Technology Called Important

“You’re getting 2 1/2 times the visual information you normally receive,” he said. “The result is extreme realism. We see these emerging and very important technologies as complementing our dome screen, which, of course, we plan to upgrade.”

Kirsch described simulation theater such as that seen at Disneyland as using computer-controlled movement of the seat or cabin in which the viewer is placed “to simulate the environment you experience on film--as, for instance, a space flight.”

Kirsch cautioned, however, against seeing the center as an entertainment outlet. He said the focus “is and always will be” education.

“We are a nonprofit, educational institution dedicated to enhancing the public’s understanding and appreciation of science and the world around us,” he said. “That’s what we’re here to do, to make education as stimulating and as entertaining as possible. We are in no way in competition with Disneyland.”

Rodi said expansion is needed mainly for the sake of education. He said the current “demonstration classroom” accommodates 15 schoolchildren every 40 minutes.

“When you’re greeting 50,000 schoolchildren a year, 15 every 40 minutes just doesn’t cut it,” he said.

Plans call for three demonstration classrooms that will each be able to accommodate 40 students every 40 minutes, “a 600% increase.”

Kirsch said the center’s 24-member board hopes for “approval of the concept” by March of 1988--its 15th anniversary--with construction to begin in 1989.