Liberty Science Center Plans $104M Expansion

And the facility has plenty of room to expand: It's situated within the 1,200-acre Liberty State Park. Officials say construction will begin early next year, and will be completed in early 2007.

"We have severe capacity issues," Emlyn Koster, the center's president/CEO admitted in announcing the expansion. The project, which will boost the facility's size to just under 300,000 sf, will re-arrange the existing interior spaces and add a whole new wing. Also part of the plan is a new four-story glass atrium.

Museum officials say actual facility construction will cost $71 million, with the remaining $33 million going for financing, administration, new exhibits and educational and outreach program development. Financing will occur in two phases, beginning with a $14.2-million New Jersey EDA bond issue last December that will be applied to renovation costs.

Once the museum raises a certain amount of private funds for phase one, mostly from corporate donors, the EDA will issue up to $75 million in bonds for a second phase. The second bond issue will boost the state's commitment to a total of $89 million. Debt service on the state bonds will be paid through state appropriation and with funds raised by the science center itself.

The existing complex will be shut down during the two years of construction, but the Science Center won't be out of business. Plans call for a portion of exhibits to be moved temporarily to the old CNJ railroad terminal, soon to be renovated, on the shore of the Hudson River here. Other Science Center functions will be moved to Verizon headquarters in Newark and to hospital auditoriums in Morristown and Summit, NJ.

"And while this building is under construction, we will redirect our energies toward bringing the challenges of science learning into the community at a more grassroots level," according to Robert J. Dougherty Jr., Science Center board chairman and president/COO of PSEG Energy Holdings.

Skanska USA is providing construction management services, and the Philadelphia-based EwingCole is the architectural and engineering firm for the project. Granary Associates is acting as the Liberty Science Center's owner's rep.