Putting Their Minds to It

It took a couple of decades and $24 million, but Orange County’s very own science center opens Saturday in Santa Ana.

The Discovery Science Center’s 3-D Laser Theater, live stage show and about 100 hands-on, play-and-learn exhibits aim to kindle the scientific curiosity of children--and maybe their parents, too.

The two-story, 59,000-square-foot building can hold 1,000 visitors. Still, officials expect initial demand to be so intense they are requiring reservations through January. (Reservations may be made only by phone at [714] 542-2823.)

Visitors will enter a building that was once a furniture store but has been converted to a science fun house. The architecture is playful, right up to the 10-story cube seemingly balanced on one of its corners. The cube, which is the center’s logo, is intended to become a landmark beside the Santa Ana Freeway at Main Street.

Its Tinker Toy skeleton is visible now. By spring it will have a skin of aluminum or fiberglass louvers--except for the southwestern side, which will be covered with power-generating solar panels. The panels, provided by Edison Source, under ideal conditions will produce 20 kilowatts for use by the science center.

The cube eventually will be fitted with fiberoptic cable along its edges that will light up like neon tubes and change colors every five seconds. Once the cube is finished, officials will decide whether to build a platform inside it for an exhibit accessible from the center’s second floor.

Once through the center’s tall, glass entryway, visitors find themselves in an atrium that points them to the right toward a gift shop and dining room, to the left toward the Sun Stage for live science demonstrations, or straight ahead to the exhibits.

This, according to the center’s slogan, is “Science-- Southern California Style”--glitzy, playful and thrill-seeking. By design, some exhibits impart a sense of “safe danger” and therefore excitement, said Mark Walhimer, vice president for exhibits.

Visitors see the best example immediately: Bed of Nails. Lie down on a plastic tabletop, push the button and 3,500 sharp, steel nails emerge through holes in the plastic. They lift you up, but it doesn’t hurt. Why not?

The exhibit includes a brief explanation, but the child’s real gain is not factual, said Walhimer. It is the awakening of curiosity that can trigger a lifetime of scientific interest.

The theme continues through other exhibits:

* Shake Shack, an enclosed platform on which you can sit or stand and feel the accurately reproduced movements of major and minor earthquakes.

* Lift Yourself on Another Planet, three seats marked Earth, Moon and Mars. By pulling a rope, you can feel how much effort it takes to lift yourself in each environment.

* Fly an Airplane, a model plane in a wind tunnel. Visitors control the wind and the plane to see aerodynamics in action.

* Tornado, an 8-foot clear tube in which a miniature tornado is created. Visitors can control the tornado and see close up how awesome twisters behave.

The natural earth exhibits are on the ground floor, the aerospace exhibits upstairs. Also upstairs is KidStation for children 5 and younger. They can suit up as astronauts, crawl through a rocket ship and communicate with mission control. They can electronically finger-paint by touching a video screen.

The private, nonprofit science center opens debt-free and with a $1-million endowment fund, according to its president, Karen Johnson.

A second phase of construction is planned to provide a parking structure, an Imax theater and increased exhibit floor space up to 100,000 square feet. Fund-raising to finance construction and increase the endowment will begin in the summer, she said. The new spaces could open in about five years.

The Discovery Science Center is part of a remarkable, worldwide proliferation of science centers that began with the opening of San Francisco’s Exploratorium in 1969. Previous science museums had kept their exhibits behind glass, but the Exploratorium brought the exhibits onto the floor for touching and tinkering.

The Assn. of Science-Technology Centers was formed four years later by the directors of 15 science centers in large cities. Their numbers multiplied rapidly, but, according to association spokeswoman Ellen Griffee, the pace has increased even more over the last decade as medium-size cities joined in.

The association now lists 314 science centers in the United States, the newest being “The Cube” in Santa Ana.

Seeds Planted in 1978

Its seeds were planted 20 years earlier and 10 miles away in Irvine, when John Goodman, a high school science teacher, returned home from the San Francisco Exploratorium and wondered, “Why don’t we have one of those here?”

Encouraged by the reaction of fellow teachers in the Irvine Unified School District, Goodman and some friends incorporated the Experience Center in 1978 as a nonprofit organization. Two years later they opened their hands-on science center in an unused classroom at Culverdale School in Irvine, featuring exhibits handmade by Goodman.

“He was an incredible creator of exhibits,” recalled Robert W. Howard, a Newport Beach developer and chairman of Goodman’s board of directors. But fund-raising was not nearly as successful. “I have an old newsletter where we were bragging about the fact that we had $5,000 in the bank,” said Howard.

“I was great at scrounging stuff,” said Goodman, “but I wasn’t that great at raising money.” Not that there was any to be had, he added. These were the recession years of the early ‘80s, “and our consultant said you can’t succeed right now. Don’t even try.”

When the school district demanded its classroom back, the Experience Center dropped from sight.

It was not the end of the center’s board of directors, however. A group trying to create a hands-on historical park in Santa Ana, the Discovery Museum, invited the science center’s board to merge organizations, and they agreed. The history board got some well-connected board members and the science board was able to keep its science center idea alive.

“Each had their own agenda, but we decided to get the history center done, then we’d go on to science,” Howard said.

It wasn’t until 1988 that a science center fund-raising study was commissioned, and the results were encouraging, according to Johnson. “It said we could raise $125 million, so the board voted to try to raise the capital.”

But in the early ‘90s, hard times descended once more. “I went out to raise money,” said Johnson, “but the developers had all gone into the tank. They were either going broke or cutting way back.

“Developers lead philanthropy in Orange County. They did the Performing Arts Center, South Coast Rep, any major cultural entity. Then the county went bankrupt in ‘94, and that pretty much did it.”

Contributions from philanthropist Betty Hutton Williams of Villa Park and the McDonnell Douglas Foundation had kept the organization going, but the county government bankruptcy precluded help from Santa Ana, which had pledged to provide land near the Bowers Museum.

‘Walkie’ Ray Steps Up

“This was awful news,” recalled James “Walkie” Ray, an Irvine developer who had joined the board. “We’d put lots of money into plans for the site. Now it was the bottom of the depression and we were living hand-to-mouth.”

The purse was so thin that when a bank sent the science center board what seemed like a form letter offering a $50,000 line of credit, the board jumped at it. “It must have been a bank error, but we drew it right down to the bottom,” Ray said.

What happened next was the making of the science center, said Johnson. “Walkie Ray decided to put his heart and soul into the science center, and without that it never would have happened.” Ray started trolling his network.

He persuaded Anton Segerstrom, a member of the family that owns South Coast Plaza, to allot space in the Crystal Court shopping mall for a mini science center.

The Launch Pad opened June 1993, with a few exhibits and a first taste of box-office revenue. But its biggest effect was its mere presence, Ray said. “We were developing a reputation, creating the nucleus of a staff. There was something at last to show prospective donors.”

Ray searched for a suitable science center building and found the former Barker Bros. furniture store at the Santa Ana Freeway and Main Street standing empty. “It turned out I knew the landowner and I had a relationship with the ground lessee. They were having a dispute.”

Ray stepped in and arranged to buy the building for $1.45 million, with a million of it coming back as a donation. He obtained a 75-year ground lease “at a very favorable rate and free rent the first two years.” He persuaded Santa Ana to obtain surrounding land from Caltrans and donate it and an abandoned street to the science center.

Ray arranged a $6-million construction loan.

A ‘Table Filler’ Pans Out

But Ray’s coup, which he admits was mostly luck, occurred in 1995 when he threw a “cultivation dinner” at his home in Corona del Mar.

Some of his board members attended, but the guest of honor--that is, the fund-raising target--was the owner of a trash hauling firm. Trash haulers depend on municipal governments for business, so “they have to be political,” Ray said. “I thought maybe they’d do something to help the community.”

To fill up the table, a board member offered to bring a friend, Jonathan Blum, then head of marketing for Taco Bell.

“I said, ‘Fine.’ I basically shined him on,” Ray said. “But the next day it was this guy from Taco Bell who called me back. In three, four, five months, we had a contract signed.

“He made it abundantly clear it was not some disguised marketing. He said, ‘We won’t be using this to peddle burritos,’ ” Ray recalled.

“It was because Taco Bell is headquartered in Irvine, and this would give his employees a reason to be proud of their association with Taco Bell. ‘We don’t just sell burritos, guys. We do good things in this community.’ I thought it was rather enlightened.”

It was definitely effective. “When Taco Bell jumped on board, we raised $8.8 million in 15 months,” said Johnson.

Taco Bell pledged $2 million payable over five years. In consideration, the board agreed to name its center the Taco Bell Discovery Science Center.

Taco Bell staff members were lent to help refine the center’s marketing.

Taco Bell lobbyists were enlisted to obtain state grants, and Ray said they went about it enthusiastically. “The rest of their lives are spent with the problems of their corporation, tax relief, whatever. All of a sudden they had something that really was meaningful and possibly even good.”

Their efforts netted $4 million in state funds and paved the way for another $2.75 million, Ray said. The momentum led to big donations from others: the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the George Hoag Family Foundation, the Pacific Life Foundation, John and Donna Crean and others.

“When we open, we’re going to have money in the bank,” said Ray. “When you consider the pledges, everything will have been paid off.”

Now comes the critical moment, he said.

“We have a pretty building and a funny-looking cube, but people aren’t going to come back unless they have a good experience,” Ray said.

“We’re attempting to merge entertainment and education. Now we have to deliver.”