Construction will begin soon on the next piece of a Fresno State project the university hopes will change science studies in the San Joaquin Valley and could even change the Valley itself.
Temporarily called Science II, this new building will add to the Central California Science Center.

With a final price tag of about $90 million, the center will transform the Valley's science education and scientific research as it invigorates the region's long-suffering economy, university officials say.

The Science II building will include offices to replace the campus' ramshackle San Ramon complex and will cost somewhere between $20 million and $23 million.

The new building will sit near the present Science I building, Downing Planetarium and the state crime laboratory.

Coming soon: a Downing planetarium museum.

And maybe later: a Downing life science outdoor plaza, a native plants garden, a science partners building of up to 80,000 square feet and high-tech research and development centers for university departments, faculty and entrepreneurs to collaborate.

The Science II building originally was to be devoted solely to science, says Gary S. Wilson, California State University, Fresno's director of facilities planning.

Then the university added the long-postponed replacement of the decrepit, "temporary," 1970s-era San Ramon classroom and office building.

"That got us on top," Wilson says of Fresno State's successful bid for state funds.

Fresno State President John Welty and other university officials let potential donors know that "naming opportunities" exist for the science buildings project and others on campus. Donate significant money, and Science II could bear the name of you or your company.

Voters' approval of Proposition 47 -- a $13.05 billion state bond measure -- in November supplied revenue to equip the Science II project.

Construction should begin within months, creating a three-story, 73,000-square-foot building just north of the present science building and east of Downing Planetarium.

The College of Science and Mathematics, including its dean's complex, psychology and criminology departments' offices and portions of the College of Social Science, also will reside within Science II.

The eventual goal of K.P. Wong, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics, and Stanley Ziegler, retired associate dean in the School of Natural Sciences, is to change access to and development of the latest science in Central California.

Welty speaks of new possibilities, new applications and new research. Such collaboration could transform the San Joaquin Valley's science education and research, and the region's long-suffering economy, Wong and Ziegler say.

They say the Science Center will repair the Valley's historical and damaging underdevelopment in the sciences.

"Every school year, I talk to our new students," Wong says. "I'm stunned. They have never seen the Lawrence Hall of Science [at the University of California at Berkeley]. They never saw the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Exploratorium" in San Francisco.

"So I thought, 'Why not put the people together here?' "

He and Ziegler see Fresno State's chance to become a regional research and development center in such fields as water supply and quality, river conservation, earthquake studies and expanded U.S. Forest Service and NASA work.

They envision local investors buying into projects that will enhance the Valley's competitive position by retaining better scientific minds, beginning in childhood.

"We will bring all those scientists right here, where kids can talk with them," Wong says.

The excited scientists mention other areas of opportunity and need: air quality and asthma, forensic chemistry and prevention of highway vehicle pileups.