Calumet Visitor Center Project - 2008 Project Updates

November 2008
Staff from the park, the Harpers Ferry Interpretive Design Center, Midwest Regional Office and the Office of Krister Olmon, Inc. participated in a Value Analysis Workshop to select and refine a preferred alternative for development. This scheme will be further developed through the exhibit design process.

Download a pdf of the preferred alternative here. 2.36 MB (This alternative is in the very early stages of development and will be further refined through the process. All titles, objects and concepts described within are works in progress and may be changed or even deleted as they are further analyzed.) We are interested in your thoughts about the Union Building exhibits. You are welcome to email comments or ideas about the proposed scheme or the overall interior rehabilitation project.

Work on the steam heating project is nearing completion and the heating system will be activated for the first floor within the next few weeks. The second and third floors will not be activated until the windows are reinstalled on those floors next year.

October 2008
The National Park Service (NPS) and our exhibit planning firm, Krister Olmon, Inc. are hosting a meeting on Tuesday, October 28, 2008, to present preliminary exhibit design alternatives for the Union Building. The meeting will be held at Park headquarters, located at 25970 Red Jacket Road, Calumet beginning at 6:30 p.m.

The purpose of the exhibit is to interpret the relationship of community residents, commercial ventures, and civic organizations to the mining story. The exhibit is tentatively titled Life in a Copper Mining Community. Krister Olmon has been tasked with developing three proposals for presenting Calumet's social history through these exhibits. The firm will share these initial concepts at the meeting. The exhibit planners and designers will show how they intend to distill the interpretive stories and major interpretive themes into messages easily understood in exhibits. In this early stage of development, participants can expect to see a "bubble diagram", a tentative floor plan, and a few illustrations.

August 2008
Rehabilitation of the steam heating system has begun with targeted completion of late Fall 2008.

Krister Olmon, Inc. was selected as the exhibit planning and design contractor from the National Park Service Indefinite Quantities Contract. An exhibit design charette was held with staff from the park, Harpers Ferry Design Center, Midwest Region and Krister Olmon, Inc. to discuss park stories and themes and potential materials for information and display. In late October, a Value Analysis of proposed alternatives for exhibit treatment will be held. A public meeting will be coordinated with this meeting to allow for comment by interested parties.

July 2008
Kirk Associates, LLC in association with SmithGroup, the architectural firm working on the project, held a Value Analysis Study of the various alternatives proposed for the architectural component of the interior rehabilitation. The report from this meeting is currently in draft form and a copy will be posted here when finalized.