New building to showcase Northwest Arctic culture

KOTZEBUE, Alaska -- About 200 Kotzebue residents got to check out the new Northwest Arctic Heritage Center on Dec. 19. The building is the new regional headquarters for four national parks.

"What we wanted to build here was a heritage center that's on par with those around the nation," said George Helfrich, superintendant of the western Arctic national parklands. "The building is a physical statement of the National Park Service."

The bow-shaped building is about 12,350 square feet, and includes Park Service offices, an exhibit hall, a gift shop and a multipurpose room large enough to accommodate 90 people.

The National Park Service purchased the land for the new center from NANA Regional Corporation about 10 years ago. NANA used to operate the Museum of the Arctic and a tourism program on that site, but the building was old and dilapidated and had long been closed up.

The Park Service demolished the Museum of the Arctic to make way for a new, energy-efficient structure that cost about $14 million, including the construction of a new maintenance shed for Park Service vehicles. The Heritage Center was designed by RIM Architects and constructed by UIC Construction.

Helfrich said that the new building will better help the Park Service to showcase the unique environment and culture of the Northwest Arctic, as well as host researchers, Park Rangers and run programs like the Junior Rangers.

"We were doing our entire interpretation center essentially out of a double-wide trailer," Helfrich said.

On entering the building, the first thing visitors see is a striking, floor-to-ceiling painting of wooly mammoths in an entry way. That leads to an airy reception hall, dominated by a wooden umiaq frame suspended from a high ceiling.

The highlight of the center is an exhibit hall off the main entrance, a long room lined with environmental scenes, traditional tools and animals from the region, designed by the Vancouver firm AldrichPear Associates.

As visitors progress through the room, the exhibit flows from mountain scenes to beaches, from summer to winter, connected by a stream of water that transitions from an ice-covered trickle, to a river, to the ocean. Animals line the scenes, some are taxidermy and others sculpted out of resin. A mountain sheep clambers on a rocky incline, a caribou gingerly steps around sleeping husky as another caribou crosses a creek - a transparent cube that shows the sea life teeming about its hooves. At the far end of the hall a beluga lies prone on a sunset-colored beach.

Creative director Victor Chorobik said that in designing the exhibit, his team tried to create "a theatrical place that would transport you to another location."

"You are inside the building, but the story is of a much bigger environment. We tried to create a place where people feel transformed ... The challenge is that the stories are huge, the area is larger and how do you do this in one room?" Chorobik said.

Planning for the exhibit began in 2005, and Chorobik said that many of the ideas that were included in the final design resulted from a two-day workshop of about 100 people that included many of the region's elders. One example is the umiaq in the front hall. It was suspended upside down on purpose, Chorobik said, inspired by a resident's mention that people often took cover under a flipped umiaq. "It symbolizes shelter," Chorobik said.

Some of those participants were included in another feature of the exhibit, the three audio "storytelling stations" positioned along the hall, where visitors can listen to different recordings from the area, including elder stories, scary stories and stories of contemporary life in the Arctic.

Jean Marshall has been volunteering at the new center four or five days a week since it opened. She said she's been to national park centers in the Lower 48 and the new Kotzebue center is no longer outshined by any of them.

"You know that you're walking into a center that reflects the period and history, that those things are captured here. Each heritage center reflects the people of the region," Marshall said.

While the building is brand new, there is a little bit of the old mixed in as well. When the Park Service bought the Museum of the Arctic, they acquired all its artifacts in the deal - mostly stuffed and mounted sheep, moose, bear, wolf and other animals. Parks donated the animals which were in good condition for schools to use as their mascots, destroyed the rest, and kept one -a stuffed polar bear on display in the new center's multipurpose room.

The Parks Service is planning a grand opening for early June 2010, a bigger celebration that will include representatives from the regional and National Parks Service offices and other statewide officials. It's open to those who missed the first party, or those who would like to take another look.

"I've told people to feel free to come back again, because everytime I come here I see something new," Marshall said.