| Veterans
News Flash 
New
Pearl Harbor Museum
Scheduled for 2010
Fri Sep 26, 10:20 AM ET
A $33 million contract has been awarded for the
construction of a new visitors center at the USS
Arizona Memorial, which is getting nearly twice
as many tourists as its facilities were designed
to handle.
The Navy on Wednesday announced that Watts Constructors
of Honolulu has been awarded the contract to build
a new museum, shop and a second theater at Hawaii's
top tourist destination. The total cost of the
new site is expected to reach $54 million.
Construction is expected to begin before the end
of the year. The memorial is expected to remain
open while the new visitors center is being built,
with completion expected by the 69th anniversary
of the Pearl Harbor attack in December 2010.
Current visitor buildings are built on land dredged
from Pearl Harbor and have been gradually sinking,
with portions of the center sagging by as much
as 30 inches since the center opened in 1980.
Existing visitor areas at the memorial will be
torn down after the expanded facilities are completed.
The theater will remain, but a second will be built
to cut what currently can be a two-hour wait to
see historic film of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The Arizona Memorial Museum Association plans
to double the size of its museum from the current
2,500 square feet. The new museum will allow visitors
to see items currently not on display, including
some of the thousands of donated artifacts now
kept in a warehouse.
The memorial was designed to accommodate 2,400
visitors a day. It now draws 1.5 million a year.
The memorial itself sits atop the battleship,
which was sunk along with several others on Dec.
7, 1941, by Japanese planes. More than 900 crew
members remain entombed in the ship.
SOURCE:
Yahoo News
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