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 Lead Stories

 On deck: LIMSAT

by KEN SCHACHTER

As Art Rossoff tells it, he never sat up in bed and yelled, "Eureka!"

The notion bubbled up slowly as other areas boasted new science museums. As early as 1989, the idea to create one for Long Island seemed self-evident.

It was then that Rossoff, now 80, started pitching his plan to politicians, executives, editors, anyone who would listen. Now, with a phalanx of blue chip leaders at his side, vision is nearing reality.

The Long Island Museum of Science and Technology - LIMSAT - could open in Hangar 2 between the newly opened Cradle of Aviation and Long Island Children's Museum as early as next June.

To be sure, some spadework has yet to be done.

A $6.8 million loan to Nassau Heritage, which runs Museum Row at Mitchel Field, has been approved by the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency, but bonds on the loan have yet to be issued. Ed Smits, chief executive officer of Nassau Heritage, said the hurdle is expected to be cleared by the end of July, though the possibility of a snag remains.

The bond sale hinges on the resolution of a lawsuit by the Civil Service Employee's Association, angered when it secured no jobs in the contract to manage Museum Row. Last month, a State Supreme Court justice dismissed CSEA's suit, arguing that Nassau should have held open bidding on the contract rather than award it to Nassau Heritage.

Buyers could shy away from the bonds should CSEA appeal, said Stephen Barre, president of Friends of LIMSAT's board of directors. But if the union drops the case, "the bonds will be issued rather quickly," said Barre, who also is president of Westbury-based Servo Corporation of America.

About $300,000 of the proceeds will be allocated to cleaning and painting 20,000-square-foot Hangar 2. LIMSAT is slated to occupy 5,000 square feet with the same amount of space going to the Nassau County Fire Fighters Museum. The Cradle will take the remainder to exhibit planes too large for its current hall, possibly including a Grumman F-14 Tomcat and a Fairchild-Republic A-10 Warthog.

With the hangar space nearly secured - current plans don't call for air conditioning because the interim site is expected to be in use only two to three years - the LIMSAT board is turning to raising funds for the exhibits themselves.

Morton Certilman, head of the LIMSAT steering committee as well as the Long Island Regional Planning Board, estimated that the museum will have to collect about $2 million to $2.5 million for exhibits.

"We've gotten some corporate sponsors already but the really big donors are waiting for us to get our location and exhibits set," he said. "It would be in the latter part of the summer when a concerted corporate fundraising effort will take place."

Helping to set the stage for LIMSAT's drive are behind-the-scenes players like Pat Howley, executive director of the Long Island Forum for Technology, who has been jawboning companies despite the sluggish economy.

"We're trying to convince our members that everything has its moment," she said. "This is LIMSAT's moment."

That the project has reached this point is a testament to the sheer will of LIMSAT's backers.

In 1994, Rossoff was shuttling to Albany as he worked with the staff of Gov. Mario Cuomo on a five-year, $25 million capital grant.

"The members of the governor's staff and the budget people appeared ready to provide it," he said. "We didn't expect that Cuomo would not be reelected and we'd have to start all over again."

Two years later, Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta committed the county to build a facility for LIMSAT after funding the Cradle of Aviation. That plan sank as red ink engulfed the county's finances.

The interim home provides a window for LIMSAT to get established, give donors and visitors an only somewhat abbreviated museum experience and raise the tens of millions of dollars that will be needed for a permanent home on the same site.

Benjamin Parris, director of LIMSAT, said that even in Hangar 2 the gate could reach 300,000 per year. Target audience is middle school age and beyond, essentially picking up where the children's museum leaves off.

Hangar 2 will not have its own lobby, ticket, bathroom or catering facilities. Those will be provided in the Cradle of Aviation's Reckson Center Atrium and its Red Planet CafŽ.

That arrangement has its advantages, though. Nearly all of LIMSAT's space will be devoted to exhibits, effectively enhancing its footprint.

What will visitors find inside?

Ted Ansbacher, a White Plains-based museum consultant who surveyed other science centers around the country in a quest for riveting exhibits, said LIMSAT would mix high and low technology. The goal: stimulate and amaze, but also provide some hands-on activities.

"We hope to combine both ends," he said. "The latest in technology, while letting people develop a gut feeling of how things work."

Artificial lightning will flash out of an electro-static generator in an eye-opening demonstration of the principle behind static electricity.

Another exhibit will let visitors build their own computer-controlled robots.

Some of those exhibits - familiar to visitors of other science centers - already have had a dry run. During its long gestation period without a home, for about two years, until June 2001, LIMSAT used two Kings Park School District classrooms to preview exhibits and test audience reaction.

Another class of exhibits, though, represents an attempt to hurtle past other science museums.

The LIMSAT board has embraced the notion of a "virtual museum" that would allow visitors to view and interact with technology on site and even in remote locations such as SUNY Stony Brook or Brookhaven National Laboratory.

For instance, a 3D rendering of an experiment at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider could be piped into LIMSAT, said Jerry Sandler, LIMSAT board member and retired president of Grumman Data Systems and Service.

"We want to differentiate it from other museums around the country," he said. "We want to leapfrog them in terms of technology."

Using virtual exhibits also could keep costs down and allow a more rapid rotation of exhibits to keep the museum fresh and attendance up. The technology also creates a "multiplier effect," said Sandler, cramming more museum experience into a compact floor plan.

To LIMSAT's supporters, there's far more at stake than another educational or cultural jewel for the Island. They expect the museum to inspire a new generation of Long Island students to study science and engineering and provide the backbone of Tech Island.

"We have to get school kids excited about science and technology," said Yacov Shamash, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook. "It's required if we are the expand the science and technology infrastructure on Long Island."

For Rossoff, whom Sandler called the "founding father" of LIMSAT, the move to Hangar 2 is a vision deferred but not denied. He still wants to give LIMSAT a permanent home.

"The dream still stands," he said. "I want to see that happen in my lifetime."

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