New name, bigger vision for Wonders of Wildlife

So long, Wonders of Wildlife.

As of Wednesday, the green-roofed building at Sunshine and Campbell has a new name and mission: America's Wildlife Museum & Aquarium.

At a cost of about $100 million in private money, the nonprofit museum is nearing completion of its seven-year renovation. Museum officials gave reporters a sneak peek of a small portion of what's inside Wednesday afternoon.

"We hope it becomes a must-see destination for 60 million people who enjoy the outdoors," said Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris, adding that the target opening date is the spring of 2016.

Local media and journalists with the Professional Outdoor Media Association, in town for its annual convention, were invited to see one of the museum's showcase exhibits, the Shipwreck Gallery.

They took in a glowing two-story tall saltwater tank filled with live ocean fish, designed to give visitors the feel of exploring a sunken ship, At the base of the cylindrical aquarium lay the foundation for a hands-on saltwater stingray tank that will let visitors touch and feed the ocean creatures (the barbs will be clipped off) when the facility reopens.

Large saltwater aquariums in the walls of the gallery showcased a 220-pound goliath grouper, 3-foot long spotted moray eels, live spiny lobsters and brilliantly hued reef fish. Overhead, schools of mounted tuna, jacks and giant hammerhead sharks appear to swim among the rusty beams of the sunken ship.

In another area, visitors will see a tall tank with ragged-toothed sand tiger sharks, black tip sharks, bonnet head sharks and other species cruising above their heads.

According to WOW's website, other new exhibits will include "a flooded rain forest exhibit, shark and ray touch tanks, catfish and turtle feeding pools, a large living coral tank, a bird aviary and a nocturnal swamp."

America's Wildlife Museum & Aquarium won't be just about the world's fish. Organizers said when the museum is completed it will showcase 35,000 fish, mammals, reptiles and birds in a way designed to encourage conservation of the world's natural resources.

Morris said he hoped the museum, to which he contributed significant financial resources, would "get people connected to our past and help them appreciate the role hunters and fishermen played in the role of conservation in this country."

To that end, the museum announced new additions coming soon:

•The IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame, currently based in Dania Beach, Florida, will be relocating to the WOW facility.

The International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame recognizes famous anglers and each year inducts five members into the hall. Among the most famous anglers: Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway. Bass Pro's Morris is also an IGFA hall of famer.

Established in 1998, the Hall of Fame represents top anglers for both saltwater and freshwater fishing, along with many record-breaking mounted fish and angler memorabilia.

•America's Wildlife Museum & Aquarium also will be receiving the Boone and Crockett Club's North American Heads and Horns Collection of big game mounts that's currently housed at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody Wyoming.

The exhibit includes 40 world-record trophy mounts and other high-scoring animals ranging from caribou to elk, grizzly bear to whitetail deer.

The Heads and Horns exhibit began as a worldwide collection of record animals at New York's Bronx Zoo in 1922.

•Wonders of Wildlife chairman Rob Keck laid out the museum's plans for a major Hunting Heritage Hall. It will feature 40 diorama displays of taxidermied animals from around the world that tell the story of hunting and wildlife conservation.

Keck said the museum will also have a collection of historic fishing boats, including "Avalon," that last known surviving fishing boat used by deep-sea angler and writer Zane Gray.

Keck said the aquarium portion of the museum will lead visitors on a mile-long journey through different saltwater and freshwater environments. Its largest aquarium lets visitors stand in the middle and see fish from around the world swimming around them.

Visitors to Springfield will be able to "stand for a moment in the middle of the ocean," he said.

Mayor Bob Stephens said the museum will be a major tourism draw for the city.

"This is huge," he said, "and gives people even more of a reason to continue to stop in our city and to be educated on how conservation should be done. It's absolutely fantastic, even just from the engineering standpoint."

Wonders of Wildlife closed in 2007 for a significant renovation. Several grand reopening dates came and went as additional work and continued expansion increased the overall cost of the project to approximately $100 million, according to past News-Leader stories.

Stephens said he is glad to see the project nearing its completion.

"Several years ago I think a lot of people were a little skeptical about it, but he (Morris) is making this happen."

Keck, who said the museum should open next March, said it was too soon to announce how much it will cost for visitors to tour America's Wildlife Museum & Aquarium. Nor did he know yet whether people who bought season passes to Wonders of Wildlife before it closed would still be able to use them.

In 2007, the museum announced that renovations would cost $14 million, but that figure jumped to $25 million through the years, after Morris pledged $12 million and some additional assets to greatly expand the project. Other private donations also contributed to the massive expansion.

The museum grew from its original 126,129 square feet to more than 230,000 square feet today and is still under construction.

Wonders of Wildlife timeline

The museum — officially the Wonders of Wildlife National Fish and Wildlife Museum and Aquarium — broke ground on Oct. 4, 1999, and opened Nov. 2, 2001.

The $52 million museum closed in late 2007 for its first renovation. According to News-Leader archives, the nonprofit museum was funded through part of a Springfield hotel-motel tax, contributions from the state of Missouri, Bass Pro Shops donations and some tax credits.

In 2009, city officials pressed Wonders of Wildlife about how it was using its share of the city's hotel-motel tax, which generated more than $341,000 for WOW in 2007, if the museum was closed. WOW also continued to receive about $400,000 from the state museum district tax annually.

In November 2011, WOW announced it would stop accepting monthly hotel-motel tax payments from the city. At the same time, Bass Pro Shops owner Johnny Morris presented a $1.3 million gift to the Community Foundation of the Ozarks — an amount equal to the hotel-motel tax WOW had received from the city since the museum closed.

An additional $2.7 million gift was given to CFO representing the hotel-motel tax WOW had received from its opening until it closed in 2007.

In May 2013, WOW pushed back its grand opening date from January 2014 to the fall of 2014 due to the complexity of the project.

In 2014, a gigantic yellow crane was built in the Bass Pro Shops parking lot to hoist major parts of the WOW structure in place.

WOW's website projects a grand reopening in Spetember 2015.

ONLINE POLL

How will you feel when the expanded Wonders of Wildlife attraction opens? Take the online poll here