Douglas Center ready to reopen for business
Educational site resumes mission after year of refurbishment
A deteriorating, and later demolished, bridge prompted the Indiana Dunes National Park to close an important educational site in Gary about a year ago.
The bridge still is gone, but the Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education, on Lake Street in Gary’s Miller section, is to reopen on Saturday.
A ranger-led hike through Miller Woods will be this year’s first event from the Douglas Center.
A ranger is to meet visitors at the Douglas Center at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
A more formal “grand opening” is scheduled for April 22, said Bruce Rowe, the national park’s public information officer.
Events for school children at the Douglas Center probably will be months away, he added, because of the lead time needed to plan them and arrange for the buses.
Opened in early 1987 and built for a reported $1.5 million, the Douglas Center has hosted events for both school children and adults.
It is named for the late U.S. senator from Illinois who advocated in Congress for creating a national park in the Indiana dunes, when most of Indiana’s representatives didn’t favor the national park then.
The Douglas Center’s main parking lot sits on the east side of Lake Street, and the building is on the west side.
Early last year, park officials closed the building after determining that the bridge from the parking lot to the building had deteriorated and was no longer safe.
It has since been demolished. The bridge still hasn’t been replaced. Building a new one could take more than a year, Indiana Dunes National Park public information officer Bruce Rowe
said.
But a crosswalk has been painted on Lake Street to show where people can walk to the building, after walking down from the main parking lot.
Pedestrians can activate new warning lights on both sides of Lake Street that let drivers know someone is crossing.
While the building was closed to the public, Rowe said, the Douglas Center’s walls and exterior were repainted and new flooring was installed.
The east parking lot has been reopened. A small, four-car parking lot on the west side of Lake Street has remained open while the building was closed.
The national park hasn’t abandoned programs for children while the Douglas Center was closed, Rowe said.
School groups have visited the park regularly during fall and spring, he said, and about 1,100 children attended the park’s Maple Sugar Time event, held earlier this month at the park’s Chellberg Farm for the first time since the COVID pandemic began in 2020.