ALISO VIEJO : Science Museum Must Close Doors

After 17 years of planning and less than six months of operation, the county’s first natural science museum will fold Sunday because of poor attendance, museum officials announced Wednesday.

The Museum of Natural History and Science board of directors voted Tuesday night to shut down the 32,000-square-foot facility. A museum trustee blamed the closing on the sluggish national economy and the Gulf War.

“With the recession and the war, our financial situation over the past four months has just grown worse and worse,” said Edward Pitts, a member of the museum board of trustees. “When people are worried about losing their jobs, spending 10 or 20 bucks for the museum is not something that people do.”

Officials said that since the museum opening last December, more than 40,000 people have visited it. But, Pitts said, most of that patronage came during the first weeks.

“In the beginning, we were drawing 1,000 people a day,” he said. “After the Gulf War broke out, sometimes we would go a whole day with only 20 or 30 visitors.”

Last weekend, museum trustees issued a last-minute plea for funds from the business community, saying that the facility needed $150,000 to remain open.

“We got a lot of phone calls and moral support,” said Susan Moore-Laux, acting executive director of the museum. “But the dollars promised were not sufficient” to keep the museum operating.

The museum will now “retreat and regroup,” Pitts said. Officials are looking for donated warehouse space in which to store the museum’s collection of archeological artifacts unearthed in the county.

The Natural History Foundation of Orange County, which formed in 1974 to encourage the display of local archeological finds, will move its administration to offices at the Eastbluff School in Newport Beach.

On Wednesday, museum officials were downcast over the impending closing, but determined to keep looking for a permanent home.

“It’s a sad thing,” Pitts said, “but on the other hand, the museum is too good an idea not to work. We’re retreating now, but we will return.”