ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Will the moribund Science Center of Pinellas in St. Petersburg be filled with young people learning about science once again?

That could be the case after a group of Pinellas-based lawmakers convened at the facility on Friday to discuss the funding that has been approved to restore and rehabilitate the once vital education center. For decades, the center instructed thousands of students and teenagers annually about geology, zoology, marine life, computer science and other programs.

What You Need To Know

  • The city of St. Petersburg purchased the Science Center building from CareerSource Pinellas in 2019
  • The Florida Legislature appropriated $500,000 for the Science Center during the 2021 session

  • A U.S. House Appropriations Committee has approved $3 million for the Science Center

“We right now just got word from Congressman (Charlie) Crist’s office that we’re in the draft appropriations of $3 million in the bill,” said St. Petersburg City Councilman Robert Blackmon. “We also have private donations in the six-figure range, so we’re looking good right now funding wise.”

Blackmon and Democratic state Sen. Darryl Rouson – both of whom say they used to regularly visit the Science Center – began making the public campaign in 2020 to help restore the center. Blackmon has said he began thinking of reviving it after the city purchased the building that housed the Science Center from CareerSource Pinellas in 2019. City officials had initially announced that they had intended to raze it and use the land for affordable housing, and perhaps use some of the land for expanding a nearby wastewater treatment plant.

Rouson then teamed up with Pinellas-based Republican state Rep. Linda Chaney to sponsor a $500,000 funding request during this year’s legislative session that was approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. DeSantis.

“I was very vocal about how important this was,” Cheney said about her lobbying efforts with her House colleagues. “This is not just a building. It’s not just a program. This is a keystone in the community. This feeds into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).”

Sen. Rouson spoke about how his Stanford Ph.D.-educated brother Damian Rouson has said that he discovered a passion for computers when he learned computer programming language at the Science Center in 1979.

“We need to make sure that minority children have access to this place,” Sen. Rouson said, specifically mentioning outreach to communities like Childs Park and Campbell Park in South St. Pete.

Pathfinder, a St. Pete-based nonprofit, is the lead agency on the project.

“We’re just super excited to be involved in this,” said Pathfinder board member Katie Horal. “We’ve been dedicated to education, serving our community and broadening the horizon in the STEM field.”

The $3 million funding from the federal government is crucial to the eventual rehabilitation of the project. Late last week Pinellas Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist announced that his budget request had been passed by the Appropriations Committee in the U.S. House and will be considered on the House floor soon before advancing to the U.S. Senate.

Blackmon thinks that with more private funding coming through, the rehab could begin as early as next January.

Blackmon is also running for mayor in St. Petersburg, where the first batch of vote-by-mail ballots were sent out by the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections earlier this week. But the timing of today’s press availability was coincidental, one of his advisers said today. The committee House bill approving the funding for the Science Center happened last Friday, and Rep. Chaney and Sen. Rouson’s schedules had to be coordinated so that they could be available on Friday, Spectrum Bay News 9 was told.