Strolling down to a lagoon, across an overgrown former South Course golf fairway, Julia Bland said the serene City Park setting, complete with moss-draped oaks, a stout 1939 Works Progress Administration bridge and boys kicking soccer balls, seemed a perfect backdrop for teaching children and parents in fun ways.

It could become the setting for an elaborate new complex for the Louisiana Children's Museum, which has flourished in the Warehouse District since 1986.

A 12-acre City Park site, which may include building construction over lagoon waters, would be easy for families from Mid-City, Gentilly and Lakeview to reach. And museum officials aim to attract families regionally with an array of ramped-up programs to educate parents and teachers about childhood development, Bland said.

"It really will become a dream come true for us to be able to take the role that the museum plays in the community and make it broader and much deeper," she said. "It's a very large extension of what we are currently doing."

The downtown museum gets about 150,000 visitors a year. With the new location and expanded programs, directors think that figure can be doubled.

The museum project, which still faces two years of fundraising, would respect the natural habitat, with tucked-away parking for 200 or so vehicles, and shouldn't require cutting down trees, Bland said. But any development that cuts into City Park's green space and increases traffic congestion faces skepticism from many park loyalists.

The Children's Museum plan gained approval Tuesday in a master plan review carried out by the City Park Board of Commissioners. The board endorsed the Children's Museum project -- one scaled down sharply from a previous plan that included a pair of charter schools and a public library. In another major land-use decision, the board tentatively endorsed working with the nonprofit Bayou District Foundation to redevelop the park's closed and badly damaged North, East and West golf courses.

TV station still looking

In inviting the museum to move to the 12-acre location near the south end of Roosevelt Mall, the park board began a process of allowing cultural institutions to move to a tree-lined boulevard now mostly associated with dog walks and jogging.

Park officials rejected a proposal by Louisiana Public Broadcasting and the Metairie-based WLAE-TV station to open a studio, a 200-seat theater and music heritage museum in the same corridor, saying the complex would be more studio than cultural attraction. Though impressed by some details of the plan, officials thought it better suited for the closed John Kennedy High site just outside City Park.

While WLAE general manager Ron Yager on Wednesday said only that "we're re-evaluating our options," Charles Zewe, a member of an executive committee for a nonprofit group that has part ownership of WLAE, said park officials didn't fairly critique the television project's public appeal. "The notion that broadcasting is not cultural is absolutely ridiculous," Zewe said.

Zewe said he hopes the station can find another location soon -- and said the park is in no position to "broker" any talks with education officials about the Kennedy site. The public broadcasting station already has secured $15 million in state money for the project.

Slimmed-down vision

The Children's Museum, while approved, survived only in a drastically scaled down form. Museum officials ran into flak from park officials with an early version of their "learning village" plan that called for including a charter elementary school, charter high school and children's public library in the complex.

Already playing host to Christian Brothers School, a private boys school operating out of an old home on park grounds, the park didn't want to add "campus" uses, and it will entertain the public library idea only if city library officials make the request, said Bob Becker, the park's executive director.

The museum traditionally serves school groups and can interact with school children in many ways, providing an array of hands-on learning experiences, Bland said. But museum officials were disappointed at the rejection, for now, of the public library idea, and the new complex will offer its own in-house book loan program, she said.

The park also balked at the museum's proposal to use 35 acres near Roosevelt Mall, which park officials rejected as far too large, agreeing to just 12 acres.

Park officials, however, praised the museum's agenda for expanding its teaching and play programs, including use of a nature center, walking paths and a vegetable garden. The museum will provide a valuable cultural attraction similar to those added to major parks in many other cities, including San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Kansas City, Mo., the park's staff said.

The officials also don't object to the size of the latest proposed complex, topping 135,000 square feet, or three times the space used now by the museum in a commercial building.

'Could go nowhere'

Now the museum must find the money to pay for it all.

The park board set a two-year limit on its reservation of a site for the project, saying the museum must show steady progress in raising money, with reports at six-month intervals.

"We'll see how the children's museum proposal develops," Becker said. "It frankly could go nowhere."

Back when its proposal included the schools and public library, the museum told the park it might need to raise an eye-popping $200 million. A far smaller figure is expected to be needed now, but with design work far from done, no one knows what the total cost might be.

No decision has been made about whether the museum will sell the Warehouse District building it has called home for 21 years, Bland said.

The financing strategy isn't settled, she said. But Bland is optimistic that the mission of improving the quality of life for children and the museum's alliances with other institutions that serve children will give momentum to the campaign. And securing the park board's backing was critical, she said.

"We are making a statement about investing in our young children and our families," Bland said. "Now the fun begins."

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