D-Day Museum expansion to play major role in returning tourism to New Orleans

The National D-Day Museum will play a major role in bringing

tourism back to New Orleans.Despite Hurricane Katrina delaying its $282-million expansion, construction plans are back in place to extend the museum's space to 70,000 square feet by 2011, dwarfing the Smithsonian Institution's 5,000-square-foot National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., dedicated to World War II exhibits.In September 2003, Congress officially dubbed the D-Day Museum as the National World War II Museum.New Orleans-based Mathes Brierre Architects will work under lead architect Voorsanger & Associates Architects of New York on the master expansion plans.New attractions are expected to help boost D-Day Museum attendance from roughly 300,000 a year to between 700,000 and 800,000 after the expansion triples its size. Local visitors to the museum make up approximately 20 percent of its total turnstile count. The museum reopened after Katrina Dec. 3 and roughly 20 percent of normal traffic has returned.We expect our numbers to rise because tourism is going to come back, said Bob Farnsworth, director of capital program for the museum. The only thing is estimates are that tourism will be back in a year and our biggest concern is the next 12 months and surviving the long term while we are in expansion mode and the city is recovering.The expansion, which will add exhibits explaining what was happening in other countries during the war, is being built in phases on a campus covering two city blocks directly across Andrew Higgins Drive from the existing museum. Five to six new buildings and a new hotel and garage are planned.The museum has raised $61 million in public and private funds and the rest of the money will be from a combination of public, private and government revenues collected as construction commences on the different phases. Clem Goldberger, senior director of marketing, said Louisiana entrepreneurs and philanthropists have donated $2.5 million since Jan. 1.Farnsworth said the first phase will come online in April with the opening of the $4.2-million, four-story Discovery Hall on the main campus. Discovery Hall will be a multi- use education center for offsite teaching and video conferencing to serve kindergarten through 12th-grade students. It was originally going to open in January.One thing Katrina has done is make us look at all of our expansion plans and come up with ways to be more efficient and stay within budget, Farnsworth said.Phase four, which will begin in about a year, will include a four-dimensional, 300- seat multi-sensory theater showing a feature film that Tom Hanks will narrate and produce. The theater is expected to open 18 months to two years from the beginning of construction.This will be a world- class, knock-your-socks-off theater, Farnsworth said.The layout of the new buildings will be similar to the Smithsonian's museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Buildings in the D-Day Museum expansion will be connected by enclosed glass walkways and a futuristic-looking steel canopy will stretch across the campus.- Staff Writer Deon Roberts contributed to this report.