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WALNUT CREEK — After more than 60 years, the Lindsay Wildlife Experience — long known as the Lindsay Museum — could find a new habitat outside the city as it looks to expand, according to the nonprofit’s executives.
The 28,000-square-foot wildlife museum and hospital center has operated in Walnut Creek’s Larkey Park since 1993. A capital campaign launched in the 1980s raised $7 million to construct the building, which the city owns and rents to Lindsay. But the 25-year lease signed then is about to expire, and Lindsay executives say it’s time to plan for the center’s future in a bigger space.
“We are bursting with growth,” Lindsay Wildlife Experience Executive Director Cheryl McCormick said. “We need a campus.”
Lindsay executives worked with a consultant group over the last year to create a “master interpretive plan” for the center’s growth, McCormick said. She is working on raising money for various projects and permanent exhibits, including adding an observation deck for viewing the center’s resident bald eagle (who is very “social”), as well as replicating a redwood forest — complete with piped-in smells of the forest — for visitors to learn about California habitats. To complete all of the envisioned projects in the master plan, McCormick estimates needing between $2 million and $2.5 million.
Although those projects could be done within the existing building space, McCormick said they are just the “tip of the iceberg” because Lindsay envisions more outdoor programming and permanent housing for the wildlife animals that serve as “ambassadors” for its education programs.
Lindsay Wildlife Experience currently serves about 100,000 visitors each year and its activities include school programs, field trips and special events. From fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2018, admission revenue increased about 20 percent and its annual household memberships jumped about 35 percent from 2015 to more than 5,100 today.
It also treats or examines about 5,500 animals each year at its wildlife hospital, though its capacity is sometimes strained, according to the nonprofit’s leaders.
As Lindsay officials negotiate their lease with the city of Walnut Creek, they’re also looking elsewhere around the Bay Area for potential space, said Rosanne Siino, who chairs Lindsay Wildlife Experience’s board of directors. She said their focus is an East Bay site.
About 20 percent of the animals the center treats come from Concord, 18 percent from Walnut Creek and 13 percent from Oakland. The center’s human visitors come from all over the Bay Area and Northern California, however.
Walnut Creek City Council members and city staffers did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the potential move.
Ultimately, the decision will factor in “what space allows us to serve the greatest number of people,” McCormick said, adding that accessibility, including a location near a good transportation corridor with parking options, is also important.
One possibility within Walnut Creek would be to expand into the site adjacent to the current Lindsay building that formerly housed the nonprofit from 1965 to 1993, according to Siino and McCormick. That site is an East Bay Municipal Utility District building and a former water pump house.
Lindsay has deep roots in Walnut Creek, where it was established in 1955 as the Diablo Junior Museum Association and operated at an elementary school during summer to teach children about nature. It was renamed the Alexander Lindsay Junior Museum in 1962 to honor its late founder. When it moved in 1965 to the former water pump house in Larkey Park, the city took over the museum until 1986, when it became a private nonprofit organization.
The nonprofit formed the wildlife rehabilitation program in 1970 after people started bringing in injured or orphaned animals found in the area. The center was renamed the Lindsay Wildlife Experience in 2015.
“We want to be in Walnut Creek, but our mission is big,” McCormick said. “We are expanding well beyond our geographic footprint.”
