At last! Panama City Science & Discovery Center reopens 31 months after Hurricane Michael.

News Herald (Panama City, FL)

May 11—PANAMA CITY — When Michelle Smith was a little girl, she used to visit the Science and Discovery Center of Northwest Florida — which was known then as the Bay County Junior Museum.

A couple of decades later, she's the operations director overseeing the facility's rebirth after it was peeled open by Hurricane Michael on Oct. 10, 2018. The original building at the corner of Airport Road and Jenks Avenue was badly damaged in the storm — almost all of its roof was torn down and most of the exhibits were damaged.

"We have spent over $650,000 on rebuilding the museum and approximately $200,000 on exhibits, with some still to go," Smith said. "I'm very proud of the work we've done here."

It has taken more than 31 months to approach the condition that it could reopen.

The grand reopening celebration will be May 22, with ticketed time slots for those who wish to attend as a way of controlling the crowd size in light of COVID-19 concerns. The public can request free tickets for 10-11:30 a.m., noon to 1:30 p.m., or 2-3:30 p.m., but act fast because the available slots are already being filled.

The facility will be closed in between each time slot to allow for deep cleaning. Social distancing will be practiced during the open periods and face masks will be strongly encouraged. Tickets can be secured online at www.eventbrite.com/e/science-discovery-center-grand-reopening-event-tickets-152702859363.

For more information, call 850-769-6128 or visit the center's page at Facebook.com/ScienceDiscoveryCenterNWFL.

In 1967, the Junior Women's Club and the Women's Club of Panama City joined forces to create a children's museum in Bay County, along with help from other civic organizations and many volunteers. According to a history of the organization provided by the Science & Discovery Center, much credit goes to the late Eleanor Lewis.

"Eleanor was always great at recruiting volunteers," said Julie Cheshire, whom Lewis recruited early on, and who is still listed as an honorary member of the center's Board of Directors.

The first exhibit opened in 1969 in a farmer's market building shared by an elementary school's kindergarten class. The current museum property at 308 Airport Road in Panama City was first leased from the city in 1972. The Junior Museum of Bay County's original building (which still houses the museum) was erected and the first exhibits staged in 1981.

In June 2010, the new 6,000-square-foot Visitor Center and Classroom Building opened, and the center's new name was announced in April 2011.

Through all that time, the mission has remained the same: Educate and inspire children and adults through hands-on, interactive exhibits and programs that promote discovery of science, technology and history.

Smith took her family to the west to avoid the hurricane. Once Michael passed, her first stop on her route home was the Science & Discovery Center, which was on the way.

"It was a mess. I lost it. I couldn't stand to see it messed up so bad," she said. "The whole roof was gone off of the museum. You have insurance, but you don't know — is it going to cover it?"

The newer building on the property, which houses a preschool and administrative offices, was in better condition. In fact, classes were able to commence there in a short time after the storm.

Smith asked Mike Horsley, a general contractor, to take a look at the museum, and he had a crew working on mitigation efforts — clearing debris, covering the rooftop, draining water, ripping out damaged carpet and walls — in just a few weeks.

"We only had probably two rooms that were OK," Smith said, adding that one of those was the Reptile Room, which was home to several snakes, iguanas, an African bullfrog and other creatures.

Even with a contractor secured, repair took longer than expected because of the shortage of materials, other jobs that took precedence from time to time, and more factors beyond her control. The center's maintenance worker, Jerry Repasy, also took on repair work such as installing partitions in the restrooms.

The structure was finished except for punch list items at the end of 2020. Exhibits have been the focus for at least eight months.

"I had to wait on them to make it right," Smith said.

In the midst of it all, COVID-19 arrived.

The center's preschool program has a student capacity of about 50, but only has about 30 students this year. Smith said that may be because of parental concerns related to COVID-19 exposure.

But that might have been a blessing in disguise because of an ongoing lack of available employees. Even with the shortage of students, the center is currently short-staffed in the preschool area and reception, and is having trouble filling part-time vacancies. Reopening the museum will require bringing on more staff.

"There's no sense hiring all these people unless I have the museum," Smith said. "Now I'm having to back-staff to get people in here. I'm very lucky I have a couple from the Workforce Center that can work through their program."

However, there's another light at the end of the tunnel in that the center's summer camp sessions — which were at capacity last year — are at least halfway full already.

"We have a tight rope to walk these next weeks until we open the door," Smith said. "I'm ready to get back to as normal as we can be, and opening the museum is a big part of it."

Leading a tour of the museum, Smith pointed out a number of new exhibits and activities, many of which were a team effort between her ideas and Repasy's ingenuity.

"The storm messed everything up, so we had to tear everything down and start over," Repasy said. "I don't ask why any more, just how can I do that. It keeps me young."

The former Butterfly Room has been reworked to be a sensory room, where a funhouse mirror faces dozens of foam noodles suspended from the ceiling, concealing textured surface activities at the back wall.

The grocery market, which was always popular with little visitors, has been updated as a play area with educational counting and money activities added. Among the returning exhibits is one from John Daniel of Public Eye Soar — "JD's Funhouse," an interactive video activity.

A new life-size "Operation" game and an ambulance play area is set up in the next room, with an "X-ray" machine, a laser game and Plexiglass body system panels displaying nerves, circulatory and other systems of the human body.

In one area, kids can decorate the exterior of a tiny house, while inside they can see cutaways that show the materials used to build a house, from insulation to air movement and plumbing. The "Horsley House" was added by the repair contractor and embellished by Repasy.

"This is one of our favorite things," Smith said, demonstrating how the sink has real running water that flows down a clear plastic pipe. "It's going to be trial and error on some of these, to see how sturdy we need to get."

The Glow Room features a giant Lite Brite, a glow table, a Flash Wall that creates a "glowing shadow" of the user, and walls that can be written on with glowing markers.

An area on air and space travel has added a rocket build and test station, which allows kids to put together their own air-launched rockets that they can blast off through an enclosed exhibit to reach "the moon" at the other end of the room. A flight simulator is about to be added on the other side of the room.

The Shark Tank has information material, set up beside the half-boat that kids can play on, courtesy of Gulf Marine. A sand table can be used to create topographical maps using depth-reading colored lights.

"We're trying to do a fish station. The fish will be chipped and the weigh station will give them information on the fish," Smith said. "This was one of the more popular areas" before the storm, she added.

A group of preschoolers were in the museum's large conference room during the tour, as the resident reptile handler, Kira Burdeshaw, introduced them to a few of her scaled friends.

"It helps with getting these guys acclimated to what they're getting ready to experience once we open back up to the public," Burdeshaw said, referring to the reptiles meeting the children that day, including a red rat snake, Kenyan sand boa, and African bullfrog.

Burdeshaw also brings animals from her farm to introduce summer camp kids to everything from pot-bellied pigs to donkeys, turkeys. ducks and more. Employed with the Science & Discovery Center for 21 years, Burdeshaw said she was glad to have a director in Smith who "got it."

For Smith, understanding the mission of the Science & Discovery Center is as simple as watching what lights up kids' faces — and maybe recalling her own childhood visits to the Junior Museum.

"I see the kids who come in here and what they flock to, and what they go back to again and again," Smith said. "Call us what you want to call us, but we are still a children's museum and that's what I'm promoting."

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