Five departmental collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoology are facing a yearlong move from their age-old home on Oxford St. into the basement of the Northwest Science Building, after a series of clouded administrative indecisiveness that prompted some confusion among the staff.

Though the move has been under discussion for more than ten years, the museum only won a month and a half ago the approval of Faculty of Arts and Sciences Divisional Dean of Sciences Jeremy Bloxham and FAS Dean Michael D. Smith to move into three rooms—measuring out to 50,000 square feet—in the Northwest Building.

The MCZ hopes to renovate and move into their state-of-the-art facilities in early 2011—a project that will cost more than 18 and a half million dollars, with the move itself costing one million dollars, according to MCZ Director James Hanken.

Faced with a constant stream of acquisitions while housed in a “substandard” facility, the museum has long run out of space, Hanken said.

“We’ve been increasingly cramped in the present case—the specimens have been packed together, making it hard to access and work on them,” Hanken said. “We’ve needed to decompress them.”

With the move now seemingly definite, the MCZ staff is finalizing plans for the renovation and move of at least 10 million artifacts one tenth of a mile down the street—a move that will allow the MCZ to continue growing without worrying about the condition of its specimens.

THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

The space in Northwest can be likened to a blank slate upon which the MCZ can construct the very conditions that its current home—which was built according to 19th century standards—cannot provide.

The Oxford St. residence lacks humidity control and centralized air conditioning—which bodes poorly for delicate specimens—and its flimsy upper floors are in danger of collapsing from too much weight, Hanken said. Leaks in the roof need to be mended, and the building supports very limited information technology infrastructure.

“Everybody’s recognized this for years, that we needed better quarters,” Hanken said. “When the Northwest lab was being designed, it was recognized as an opportunity to accommodate a lot of the MCZ’s collections.”

Most museum staffers agree that the new state-of-the-art space in Northwest has clear functional advantages over the aging facility it currently occupies: foremost, a new heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system that will keep temperatures and humidities stable throughout the year to protect sensitive specimens like skins and skeletons and to prevent insect infestations.

Hanken said that on certain occasions, the museum has had to turn down specimens because “we simply can’t accommodate.” And if a researcher wants to come to work in the museum building, “we don’t really have anywhere to put them, at this point,” said Alana V. Rivera, a curatorial assistant.

At the moment, three large rooms in the basement of Northwest await refurbishment—and the potential is almost tangible. “They could be wonderful,” said Hanken, who noted that the space would give the museum the capacity to grow for another one to two decades.

The planned renovations include equipping the space with stainless steel cabinetry to accommodate specimens and greater storage space that would be especially useful for oversized items in the paleontological department. During the move itself, the museum can also rearrange its collections in better taxonomic order.

The impending renovations—which will occur in three installments over the course of three years—will also include the installation of lighting and the construction of specimen preparation labs, teaching space, and curatorial staff area, according to Hanken.