Discovery Park leaders pleased with new design
Posted: Thursday, April 8, 2010 9:35 pm
By GLENDA CAUDLE
Special Features Editor
“Excellent!” Jim Rippy said of the presentation made by Discovery Park of America architects and exhibit and landscape designers Wednesday at the Obion County Public Library.
Rippy is chairman of DPA, the multi-million dollar project being built in Union City’s northeast quadrant, across Everett Boulevard from Union City Second Baptist Church. The project was conceived and is being funded by the Robert E. and Jenny D. Kirkland Foundation. The Kirklands are residents of Union City.
The 50-acre site will begin to see new earthwork later this summer, with construction of the cornerstone museum set to begin in March 2011. The projected opening date for the education-entertainment-tourism complex is September 2012.
The team of planners returned to Union City after a month’s absence, during which time they considered the plans and dreams conveyed to them by the multiple committees charged by the Kirklands with deciding what will be featured in the project.
Representatives are sharing the architect’s first completed drawing of the museum building, reviewing updated plans for the 50-acre site on which the project is being built and presenting a showcase of ideas from the exhibit design team.
Kirkland, too, was excited about the work he had seen. “It was very good. It all seems to fit together fine — not as though any of it is contrived,” he said of the museum’s wide-open spaces and the exhibit design team’s ideas. “I think they achieved the goal of making it all work together very well and I am very well pleased. The creativity and the punctuality with which we have received their ideas has been very impressive and I look forward to this new beginning.”
“The new design has been approved with minimal conceptual changes and we have also approved the basic exhibit layout. Now the team will be putting it all together into a final plan,” Rippy added.
The architects’ plans will be revealed to the public when a few suggestions made by Kirkland on Wednesday have been implemented in the concept.
The project’s designers expect to be in Union City through Friday, meeting with representatives of the volunteer committees who have presented their initial plans for what should be included.
They will return in May to deliver updated designs.
Published in The Messenger 4.8.10
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