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Junior Museum facelift on horizon

by Bill D'Agostino

Inside the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo's current exhibit, "Patterns," children are encouraged to reconnect flat, colorful pieces and make new shapes.

The museum staff is hoping their building can similarly be reshaped, improving the experience for the more than 100,000 visitors who walk through its doors annually.

The museum, though, is a city building and since the city is short on funds these days, it's going to take some private money to make that dream a reality.

The City Council acknowledged that truth this week and conceptually -- but also enthusiastically -- approved partnering with the museum's fund-raising group, the Friends of the Junior Museum.

That partnership will allow the Friends to have more control over the project. The Friends also aim to one day lease the building and zoo from the city.

Museum staff and advocates say rebuilding will solve problems with the current building. "It's in dire need of attention," said Dan Garber, the president of the friend's board.

For instance, Exhibit Curator Joe Victory said he has limitations when he designs exhibits. The problem is that the exhibit hall is essentially a glorified hallway where 11 doors lead to and from various classrooms, offices and storage spaces. "That makes using the space really difficult," Victory said.

Reconfiguring the design of the building -- even without enlarging it -- would allow for more space for exhibits and a better flow of foot traffic, Victory said.

The Friends has no intention of turning it into a large museum like San Francisco's Exploratorium, Garber said. "We want to keep it small, and community based."

The rebuild will also allow the museum to accommodate both a rotating exhibit and a permanent one. Currently, the entire museum closes down for weeks when the one annual exhibit is being installed, Victory said.

Further, the bathrooms are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, staff is jammed into small offices, and the zoo has no place for quarantined animals. Sick critters hiding out from the cold, like a certain ferret was doing this week, have to do so in private offices right now.

"It's not as good for the public if there are animals they can't see," said Education Director Karen Miel.

"We're a lot packed in a little, itty-bitty box," said Museum Director Rachel Meyer, who is currently on leave to serve as the Friends' executive director.

The museum has not undergone any kind of renovation since 1969, the same year the zoo was added. The building was originally financed using private funds in 1934. It was the first children's museum west of the Mississippi River.

No dollar figure is yet associated with the rebuild, although an early conceptual drawing can be seen in the museum's lobby.

During the previous year, the Friends held focus groups with museum staff and frequent visitors to find out what needed to be improved. The next step is hiring an architect to design the improved building.

Even though the future of the museum is now partially in private hands, the project will still have to go through the normal, public process

The museum has already come a long way from the late-1990s, when a new board took hold and started more aggressive fund raising. Last year, the board raised $500,000. The previous board raised less than $15,000 annually.

The new funds have allowed the museum to improve the animal habitats and also extend its teaching beyond the walls of the building, into East Palo Alto, for instance, in a program supported by the Palo Alto Weekly's Holiday Fund.

"We recognized early on that there were constraints within the city, but we believed we could do it with private funds," Meyer said. "So now we're taking that to a new next step."

This is the second major public-private partnership the city has engaged in to renovate its elderly infrastructure. In 1991, the city partnered with the Friends of the Children's Theater to rebuild the theater.

It might be the wave of the future, though, as the city and state both face financial shortfalls while Palo Alto's buildings continue to age.

"Cities are going to find it tougher and tougher to rely on state funding," Friends board member and developer Roxy Rapp said. "They're going to have to look to other sources."

E-mail Bill D'Agostino at billd@paweekly.com