St. Louis Science Center looks forward to dinosaur exhibit, 64/40 reopening

Officials there are counting on this major exhibition, and next month's reopening of 64/40, to bounce back from a rough 2009.

Senior Vice President Brad Nuccio says when the eastern leg of the New I-64 shut down last December, they experienced a 40% dropoff in attendance for the first month.

He says that forced some belt-tightening.

"What we did is we had some voluntary retirements, some early retirements that people chose to take," Nuccio says.

"Fortunately we did not have to do layoffs."

The early retirement program helped the Science Center trim its employee roles from 285 to 225.

At the same time, popular exhibitions have helped bring people back to the Science Center,  including Sue the Dinosaur earlier this year.

 Now, the Science Center is turning to dinosaurs once again with an exhibition of life-size, animatronic models that opens Saturday and runs through March.


Listen/Brett Blume reports  (:39  mp3)