Bowers to Be Star Exhibit in Cultural Hub : Arts: Reopened museum is to be the centerpiece of a 90-acre district that Santa Ana hopes will revitalize the mid-town area.

With its lustrous pre-Columbian gold artifacts and ancient African figurines, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art will reopen today not only as a celebration of the past, but as harbinger of the city’s future.

City officials have pinned their hopes for revitalizing the mid-town area on a planned 90-acre museum district. With Bowers as its centerpiece, the district will serve as a magnet for visitors and new businesses.

The cultural and commercial redevelopment project, covering a triangle-shaped area bounded by Main and 17th streets and the Santa Ana Freeway, will grow to include an arts plaza. The plaza will encompass a lushly planted area with public sculpture and seats, as well as several differently themed museums.

Once established, officials say, the museums will draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually--a flood of potential consumers who will attract thriving new businesses to the area, including restaurants, gift shops, hotels and movie theaters. So far, however, only one other museum has committed to coming to the district.

The reopening of Bowers Museum “will certainly highlight what we hope the future will bring,” Councilwoman Patricia A. McGuigan said.

While acknowledging that change will not “happen overnight,” Chamber of Commerce President Michael Metzler noted that “the Bowers has always been a real jewel in the city’s crown. It enhances the value of that area and it’s going to have a spinoff effect as vendors come in to support that area. . . . In terms of long-term strategies, it’s a real winner.”

Museum officials describe the project’s economic boon as only part of its benefits to the area.

“Santa Ana might be catalyst for countywide consciousness about the arts,” said Brian Langston, spokesman for the Bowers Museum. “Many of us feel like poor relations of San Francisco and Los Angeles in the cultural dimension, but in fact that simply is not true.”

“If one just looks at the variety of cultural activity in county as a whole, we don’t need to feel anything but proud about the cultural life of our metropolis,” he said. He pointed to the Orange County Crazies improvisation troupe, the Pacific Symphony, the Alternative Repertory Theatre, the Santa Ana Zoo, the Mexican-American Arts Council and the Discovery Museum as a handful of local examples.

Museum officials are striving to make the Bowers an internationally recognized institution, Langston said. The museum features exhibits that include artifacts from China, Oceania and Africa, as well as pre-Columbian items and artworks from California’s past. It also has a new restaurant and an expanded gift shop.

“The idea is really to make people realize, through the Bowers, that Santa Ana is an arts-friendly community and that it would be a very good place for artists to settle and work and for the community broadly to come and enjoy the artwork,” Langston said.

The only other concrete proposal for the museum district now is the ambitious $37.5-million Discovery Science Center, which would include hands-on exhibits related to aerospace, health, communications and the environment. The three-story, 80,000-square-foot center will be near the Bowers, at 20th and Main streets. Also, the new museum, affiliated with the Discovery Museum in Santa Ana, is expected to draw as many as 750,000 visitors a year when completed around 1996.

Santa Ana will become a major destination point once the center is finished and the museum district begins to take shape, according to Karen Johnson, executive director of the Discovery Museum of Orange County.

“It will have enough critical mass to attract visitors not just from Orange County but from outside the county as well,” she said. “In addition, the people of Santa Ana will begin to see themselves as part of the cultural fabric of the county instead of a place that you drive through from South Coast Plaza and Disneyland.”

“There’s no question that the caliber of these facilities (is) going to make a national or international impact,” she said.

Museum District?

Santa Ana hopes to redevelop the area surrounding the Bowers Museum. It will eventually include an Arts Plaza and several different museums. Part of Main Street will be renamed Arts Boulevard.