Museum Plans Move to Griffith Park

The Los Angeles Children’s Museum, long unhappy with its cramped downtown location, is planning to build a much larger and more elaborate facility near the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park.

Museum and city officials said Friday that they are drafting a one-dollar-a-year property lease so that a new Children’s Museum can be constructed on an acre of the city-owned parking lot southeast of the zoo’s main entrance.

The current museum, they said, might become a satellite exhibit space.

Douglas Ring, president of the museum board of trustees, said the proposed new location would be more convenient for families citywide, especially those from the San Fernando Valley. The new site also would have better parking and allow for an 80,000-square-foot museum, about five times the space that the museum has occupied for the past 19 years in the Los Angeles Mall.

“On lots and lots of levels, the zoo location is a natural,” said Ring, a West Los Angeles attorney.

He declined to say how much the new museum would cost, stressing that an architect had not been hired. However, Ring said, a major fund-raising effort would be needed to supplement the $10 million the museum hopes to receive from the city’s Proposition K bond funds. Voters in 1996 approved the $750 million bond issue to pay for parks and recreational facilities.

About 200,000 visitors a year come to the museum for such attractions as a sound studio for children to record songs and a workshop in which youngsters turn recycled paper into colorful jewelry.

Attendance is well below what museum officials want and the Main Street facility is considered small compared to many other children’s museums around the country.

“It is not the most user-friendly location that one could have,” Ring said, referring to visitor complaints that parking is difficult.

For more than a decade, the museum has been searching for ways to expand. It abandoned previous plans to take over extra space in the downtown mall or to move next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the Mid-Wilshire district. The idea of moving to Griffith Park has been discussed on and off for about two years.

Besides funding questions, the plan may face protests from downtown Los Angeles interests who don’t want to see the Civic Center lose any tourist traffic. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rita Walters, who represents parts of downtown, opposes the Griffith Park proposal.

“‘I think it is an arrogance that people want to move it there,” Walters said Friday. The proposed location would be more inconvenient for many families, particularly those dependent on mass transit, she said.

The museum, while located in a city building, is a private, nonprofit entity. Admission is $5 a person but free for children under 2.

Steven L. Soboroff, president of the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission and a close ally of Mayor Richard Riordan, described himself as enthusiastic about the museum move, partly because it would also increase the number of visitors to the zoo.

“We strongly need a great zoo,” he said, “and we strongly need a great children’s museum.”

Soboroff said he expects environmental studies will answer critics’ questions about bringing more traffic into Griffith Park, as well as the idea of using park property for a museum. There were similar debates when the city leased land 12 years ago to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, which is also adjacent to the zoo.

The Griffith Park location has the support of a San Fernando Valley group that had hoped to build its own children’s museum but ran into funding problems several years ago.

Leaders of that effort, the Clubhouse Children’s Museum, have now joined forces with officials of Los Angeles Children’s Museum, according to both sides.

Many people do not like bringing their children downtown but would be happy to go to Griffith Park, said Lynn Abbott of Tarzana, who worked on the Valley museum idea and is involved in the new proposal. “I’m confident it will happen and that it will set standards for children’s museums across the nation. It will be bigger and better.”

The Recreation and Parks Commission is expected to review the lease plan by next month and the matter would then move to the City Council.

Plans for possibly using the downtown space for a satellite facility include a program to teach youngsters about city services.