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Downey officials open $10 million Columbia Memorial Space and Learning Center
By ARNOLD ADLER, Staff Writer
Story Published: Oct 29, 2009 at 9:46 AM PST
Story Updated: Oct 29, 2009 at 1:27 PM PST
DOWNEY -- The two-story, $10 million Columbia Memorial Space and Learning Center, 12400 Columbia Way, opens for regular business Thursday after a grand opening for invited guests Friday.
Initial hours will be from noon to 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Cost of admission has not been determined but will be less than $10 per person, officials said. Operation of the facility will cost an estimated $1 million a year.
"This is a new beginning for the city of Downey. … We have finally moved into the 21st century," said Jon Betthauser, executive director of the facility, in remarks Friday.
Noting that his father worked on the space program for North American Rockwell, at a site in Florida, not Downey, where most of the design and assembly was done, Betthauser said the Downey facility will hopefully, "launch our leaders of the next generation."
Betthauser stressed that while the center is meant to highlight Downey's participation in the aerospace manufacturing on that site, its main mission will be to interest young people in math and science and perhaps encourage them to be astronauts or scientists.
"This place will allow children to use their imagination," Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-City of Industry, said during opening ceremonies.
"This is where children will learn of the green jobs of the future. The center will be a slingshot for your people to propel them into the future," Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, D-South Gate, said.
"This is a great day for the city of Downey. It's been 15 years in the planning stage," said City Manager Gerald Caton, who has been in Downey for 20 years and whose father worked in the space program on the former 160-acre site.
Mayor Mario Guerra, who acted as master of ceremonies, noted that the center was pretty well established by his predecessors on the City Council when he was elected two years ago.
He singled out former City Councilmen Rick Trejo and Kirk Cartozian, who worked as a council subcommittee on the center during their eight years in office, and other former officials such as Meredith Perkins, Diane Boggs and Robert Brazelton, all of whom were present at the ceremony.
Guerra noted that different companies have manufactured aircraft on the site since 1929.
"It's great to preserve that history," county Supervisor Don Knabe said.
The Columbia Memorial Space Center and the adjoining Challenger Sports Complex honors the crews of two space shuttles who died while in space.
Columbia exploded while returning to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003. The Challenger exploded on take-off in January 1986.
Friends and family of the Challenger crew have since formed a nonprofit company to remember the Challenger by manufacturing and selling a space flight simulators.
"We now have 47 such simulators in the country. Downey's will be one of the biggest," said Pam Peterson of the Challenger group.
That program, which the city purchased some years ago for about $800,000, is being updated and will be ready in January, Betthauser said.
It's a two-hour program, aimed at youngsters, in which some will spend an hour in a replica of Mission Control and monitor a simulated space flight in an adjoining room. Others will be inside the space shuttle operating it via computers. After an hour, the two groups change places.
City Councilman Roger Brossmer, remembering his excitement on going to space camp in Huntsville, Ala., when he was young, said it later occurred to him that "we have the history, we have the site. Why not our own space camp? This will get kids excited about going into the future."
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