Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center in Southold is getting a facelift thanks to the generosity of several organizations and private donors.
The center, located at Cedar Beach in Southold, works to protect and enhance marine resources through educational programs, research projects and stewardships. A campaign to raise the $80,000 needed for upgrading the fish and touch tanks, wall exhibits, hatchery facilities, water quality lab and coastal plant greenhouse is well on the way to its goal.
Kimberly Barbour, Marine Program Outreach Manager, is thrilled about the upcoming improvements and renovations.
“We offer year-round programming and are trying to build that up by making these improvements to our educational spaces. This will allow us to really expand and diversify programs that we offer. We’d like to be open to the public on certain days, like a Natural History Museum. We’d like people to be able to drop in, check out our exhibits and our critters and see what’s going on at the center.”
One of the biggest supporters of the renovation is California Closets, a company that specializes in space management and has a commitment to sustainability.
“When this campaign came up we knew that we needed help with storage solutions, making better exhibits and being more organized with the space. We thought of California Closets immediately. They do a lot of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs and events that they’ve invited us to come and be part of. Corporate responsibility is at the center of their mission and they love what we do at the center so it was a really great partnership.”
Demolition has already begun at the facility and Barbour hopes everything will be wrapped up by March.
“We do spring break programming so we want to be back up and running; we don’t want to lose out on that. We do a lot of school visits throughout the year so we didn’t want to shut down for too long. We plan to be back up and operational by early March and we want to have everything done for our annual 5K and open house in the spring. It will be extra special; we’ll invite the whole community out to see the transformation and learn more about the existing programs and the new programs we’ll be having.”
In addition to California Closets’ donation of materials and labor, the Education Foundation for Suffolk County Extension, the Robins Island Foundation and many individuals have pledged money through crowd funding.
The Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center is located at 3690 Cedar Beach Road in Southold. Learn more at their website.
