By Dale Smith, Hometown News | View Source

Imagine hatching millions of sport fish and putting them back into the local waters.

When the Mosquito Lagoon Marine Enhancement Center on Barracuda Blvd. becomes a reality, one to four million different kinds of fish will be raised each year at the hatchery on the site of the old New Smyrna Beach High School.

The Wildlife Foundation of Florida, Inc., is proposing Phase I for the Mosquito Lagoon Marine Enhancement Center that includes renovating the former 35,000-square-foot general classroom building, constructing a kayak launch, site work, and landscaping, at a cost of $1.2 million.

Phase 1 of the project will allow the Marine Discovery Center, Inc., now on North Causeway, and the Artists’ Workshop, Inc., currently housed in the Chamber of Commerce building on Canal Street, to relocate to the site inside building 11.

“It makes more sense to save that large building than to tear it down and start over,” Brett Boston, executive director of the Wildlife Foundation of Florida, said. “The building is in great shape, only the infrastructure needs help, like heat and air conditioning and a new roof.”

The Wildlife Foundation of Florida requested $100,000 matching funds from the City of New Smyrna Beach at last week’s City Commission meeting. These funds were budgeted in this current year and were approved by the City Commission. The city’s funds would help renovate building 11.

The foundation has a 50-year lease for the 33.86-acre site from the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund to manage the site for educational, research, and passive recreational purposes as well as establish a Florida Saltwater Fishery Ecocenter.

“This is a perfect location,” Mr. Boston said. “The Marine Discovery Center can do so much there. They will be our outreach partners on-site.”

But before anyone moves in there is much to do.

“The goal is to clear everything on the site except four buildings,” said Chad Lingenfelter, chief planner, Department of Development Services. “All the other buildings are unusable for the center’s purposes.”

Work on removing non-native plants is already underway.

“We’ve removed the Brazilian Pepper plants to make room for mangrove trees,” Mr. Boston said. “The pepper plants are very invasive and take over everything.”

Funding for Phase 1- totaling $900,000 – will come from a variety of sources, including Volusia ECHO Grants-in-Aid, $600,000; Wildlife Foundation of Florida Inc., $180,000; City of New Smyrna Beach, $100,000; Artists’ Workshop Inc., $10,000; and Marine Discovery Center, Inc., $10,000.

Mr. Lingenfelter said the $600,000 from the Volusia ECHO Grants-in-Aid program is possible because the Wildlife Foundation of Florida leveraged $300,000 of the $5,385,775 assessed value as an in-kind match

“We hope to relocate Fish and Wildlife law enforcement to the site,” Mr. Boston said. “We want to renovate another building that once was the automotive shop at the high school for this purpose.”

Another building slated to be saved is the 9,600-square-foot general administration building.

“That building is 22 years old and is in very good shape,” Mr. Boston said.

If the ECHO grant application is accepted and funds become available, Mr. Boston said he’d like to get the Marine Discovery Center and Artists Workshop relocated by mid-2010.

“That would be ideal,” he said.