When Michelle Stryker walked into the cavernous space that once housed a dozen 500- to 1,500-gallon tanks at AkSarBen Aquarium, her reaction made a few hard hats turn in her direction.
“Wow,” said Stryker, facilitator with the Nebraska Game and Parks planning and programming division. “It’s all gone.”
Other than the roof and the walls, it pretty much was.
“You’re going to be shocked when you see it," Jim Swenson, Game and Parks administrator, told Stryker, among others, before leading a tour of projects included in the first of four phases of the agency’s $35 million venture park plan.
What greeted a couple dozen Game and Parks staff members and commissioners last week at the aquarium's new Interactive Exploration Center was bare earth with a channel carved through it. The area will eventually be the building’s centerpiece again, with three aquariums three times the size as the previous tanks, demonstrating how cool-water streams flow into rivers and reservoirs where a system of dimly lit, '70s-era wildlife dioramas once were.
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The facility-wide renovation project at Schramm Park State Recreation Area near Gretna is expected to be finished by late 2018 or early 2019.
Thursday, Swenson got behind the wheel of one of two passenger vans that took commissioners and staff on a tour of a set of projects that will be among the first to be completed at the four state parks or recreation areas where the venture park additions are underway: Louisville, Mahoney, Schramm and Platte River.
“The venture park project is an innovative public-private partnership inviting families outdoors, welcoming a new generation of park visitors and developing markets for new user groups,” Swenson told the commissioners before they piled into the vans. “It’s a privilege to be a part of this, because this reflects so much of what our agency does, services we provide and mission we work to accomplish.”
At Mahoney State Park, Swenson pointed out platforms that are part of a zipline course expected to be ready by April.
At Louisville State Recreation Area, the vans slowed to see where a floating playground will be stationed. At Platte River State Park, he showed commissioners the construction site of a multi-level “splash pad.” While work stopped there because of freezing temperatures, it continued at multiple venture park projects.
For most everyone on the tour, this was the first time they’d seen firsthand what project renderings have been promising since the venture park project was announced in 2015.
“Hey, I want to get my reservation in now,” commissioner Rick Brandt said after touring one of three "glamping" cabins under construction at Platte River State Park.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, that was not a typo. The glamping cabins are a response to widespread demand for a unique experience in nature. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom cabins will include indoor-y amenities such as a microwave, plumbing, heating and air, but also outdoorsy possibilities.
“You’ve got skylights so you can look out at the stars at night,” Swenson told the tour group as construction continued all around the glamping cabin.
“The natural light will feed in. You’ll have an overstuffed chair, a nice lamp, just kind of a very welcome setting in here. A relaxing setting. The bed can actually roll out through the French doors — there’ll be French doors right there, behind you. Go out on the deck, and you can choose to sleep outside if you want to. You can drop down nets on the side of you to keep the bugs away, keep the raccoons from licking your toes and all those fun things that might happen in the outdoors.
“But you know, when I give my presentations and I talk about that, you’d be surprised how many people want to do that. They want to just sleep outside. They think that’s one of the most unique and interesting features of this particular design.”
At each stop, Swenson and other Game and Parks staff spent time telling the group that the goal of each project was to get those drawn to the parks to not only enjoy them, but also for the amenities to eventually lead them outside.
Lindsay Rogers, an outdoor education specialist, described how two stationary mountain bikes will allow visitors to AkSarBen Aquarium to virtually ride nearby mountain bike paths (as soon as someone volunteers to film them 20 times or so with a GoPro). There will also be a nature center with live animals, a farm pond ecosystem and a tank of shovelnose sturgeon that kids can reach in and touch. With each, she said, there’s an implied nudge to go experience more outdoors.
“That’s great to learn here,” she said. “But go outside.”