Got Stars?

If you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Hector Vector, the
Flandrau Planetarium’s 33-year-old star projector, then you blew
it—because nobody stepped up to save the UA Science Center, which
officially closed June 1.

The staff members who continue to work at the UA Science
Center—with reduced hours and salaries—are afraid they’ll
be joining Hector on the figurative unemployment line when their
contracts expire at the end of the year.

According to Alexis Faust, the Science Center’s executive director,
future employment depends on Arizona state legislators, the final
budget they approve—and whatever they decide about the Rio Nuevo
redevelopment district.

“We just don’t know yet. … We’re obviously hopeful,” Faust
says.

To some extent, it’s business as usual for Faust and her staff.
After UA administrators put concrete plans for a new downtown Science
Center on hold last spring—blaming the bad economy—Faust
and her staff continued to think up exhibits for the new center and put
together ongoing community programs.

This summer, Faust says, employees brought astronomy programs to
day-care centers and summer camps—outreach that they hope to
continue in the fall with a portable planetarium they can bring to
schools. In the past, thousands of students from Tucson school
districts came through the planetarium as part of the schools’ science
curricula. However, Faust says nothing is booked, since most schools
are still closed for summer break.

Faust says employees are also writing grants for programming and
exhibit prototyping.

“We want more grants to help us support the programming we want to
do. … And we want to focus on ways to bridge this period of time
until we know what’s going to happen next,” Faust says.

UA President Robert Shelton confirmed via e-mail that Science Center
staff contracts end in December. He couldn’t say whether or not they
will be rehired to continue supporting existing programs or pick up
where the UA left off on the new Science Center.

“They have contracts through the end of this calendar year, and we
remain hopeful that we can extend these through the end of (fiscal
year) 2010,” Shelton wrote via e-mail. “These dedicated folks are
primarily focused on further exhibit development for the Rio Nuevo
project. These sophisticated exhibits and the associated software take
time to develop, and we want to be ready when we learn of the city’s
plans for projects on the west side of the freeway.”

Closing Flandrau and halting development on the proposed new center
did garner public complaints, but Shelton wrote that most people seem
to understand the UA’s difficult situation.

“This is a time of great frustration for many folks,” he wrote. “In
the correspondence that has come to my office, I sense that people
understand the difficulties of the state and thus the university in
providing the necessary support for Flandrau and similar
activities.”

While Hector is retired, the Science Center’s public observatory
remains open, thanks to a group of volunteers who open it for
stargazing a few nights a week. The rest of the exhibit space in the
Flandrau is blocked off, but the doors of the UA Mineral Museum are
open to the public two days a week, thanks to $1 million that remains
from a 2008 gift given by the Freeport-McMoRan Foundation.

Shelton says there are no plans to move the Mineral Museum
collection to any other part of the building, although most of it is
housed in the building’s basement.

“(I)t will remain ‘Flandrau’ as we get settled into the FY2010
budget once the state completes its actions,” Shelton wrote.

While Shelton says state lawmakers hold the key to the Science
Center’s future, Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero isn’t so sure
that looking to Phoenix is the best way to examine the future of Rio
Nuevo. The key, she says, is in the partnerships that existed before
the economic collapse.

Romero’s Ward 1 would be the home of cultural projects identified as
part of Proposition 400, the 1999 Rio Nuevo initiative that outlined
specific projects approved by voters.

“It was voted by Tucsonans. The biggest parts are an effort to bring
attention to the history Tucson has. We’re the oldest continuously
inhabited city in the United States. We have to remember that part of
the attraction in Prop 400 was not just the (proposed Tucson Convention
Center) hotel, but many projects that will make downtown a special
place to visit.”

Romero says she has asked City Manager Mike Letcher to focus on
developing a vision for the heritage and cultural components of Rio
Nuevo. However, many in the state Legislature want the tax-increment
financing (TIF) funds from Rio Nuevo to focus on revenue-producing
projects.

“I don’t think everyone thinks the hotel is the only
revenue-producing project in Rio Nuevo; cultural and environmental
tourism is just as competitive,” Romero says.

Romero says she also wants city staff to put together a
one-to-two-year plan, as well as a two-to-five-year plan “showing the
vision of how are we going to get there as a community, with or without
those TIF dollars,” she says.

While no one has surfaced publicly to champion or condemn Flandrau’s
closing, David H. Levy, who co-discovered the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet
that collided with Jupiter in 1994, says he’s certain the Science
Center will be back on the planning table once the economy
recovers.

Levy recently wrote about Flandrau’s closing in a blog he does for
Sky and Telescope magazine’s online edition. Levy described the
planetarium as a victim of the recession.

“In these hard financial times, making a convincing argument to
maintain Flandrau Planetarium while also establishing a new Science
Center for the public in the city’s downtown development project called
Rio Nuevo just wasn’t in the cards,” Levy wrote.

Levy also said he was quite sad to see the facility close; after
all, it’s where he and his wife got married on March 23, 1997.

“I have to stand behind (Shelton) on this decision,” Levy told the
Tucson Weekly. “It’s a sad loss, but I have to believe it’s
temporary.”

This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2009.