From recycled car bodies to waterless urinals, Cape Girardeau's nature center will be a lesson in conservation, planners say.

The steel roof of the Missouri Department of Conservation building will be made partly with recycled car bodies. The carpeting will come from recycled materials. Even the wood trusses and columns will come from recycled scrap wood.

"We are calling it a green, environmentally friendly building," said Kathy Love, who heads up the Conservation Department's outreach and education division.

The Conservation Department plans to award a construction contract in November or December. Construction on the $7.3 million project -- Missouri's fifth nature center -- is expected to start in January and February and take 18 months to complete.

The state's Conservation Commission has set aside $4.75 million for the project. The Cape Girardeau County Commission will issue the bonds for the project, and the state will then pay them off. The rest of the funding is expected to come from private donations that will be raised by the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation.

The project, which could be finished by June 2003, includes more than a building in Cape Girardeau County North Park. It also includes hiking trails, gardens, wetlands, parking, playground and a new entrance road to the park, Conservation Department officials say.

A great showplace'

County commissioners are excited about the nature center, which is projected to draw 100,000 visitors a year.

"It is going to be a great showplace for the Cape County area," said First District Commissioner Larry Bock.

The 20,000-square-foot, single-story building will be constructed in an area along the current park road between the Conservation Department's regional office and the American-flag-centered war memorial.

The building will have a masonry block exterior. It will face west. Its north side will look out at a 50-acre woods that will feature hiking trails.

While the nature center will have a single story, it will have an elevated, window-filled area running along the spine of the building to provide natural light.

Peckham and Wright, a Columbia, Mo., architectural firm designed the building.

Architect Brad Wright said his firm is committed to designing environmentally friendly buildings. But there's a price tag to such a commitment.

"It costs more to do it the right way than to do it the wrong way," he said.

The conservation focus in the nature center extends even to the urinals, which rely on chemicals, eliminating the need for flushing water down the drain.

The nature center's laboratory will feature a special garbage disposal that sends the garbage into an outside tank to be turned into compost.

Wright said rainwater runoff may be collected in tanks and used for watering the grounds.

Hunting, fishing, forests

The nature center's exhibits will be focused around three main themes: hunting, fishing and forests.

It will feature a large lobby, two classrooms, a multipurpose room, a 150-seat auditorium and a room with a fireplace where people can enjoy a view of the woods.

The center will have a 3,500-square-foot exhibit area that includes a 2,800-gallon aquarium featuring Mississippi River fish. Exhibits also will include a working beehive behind protective glass, a replica of an 1800s trapper's cabin and a shake table where visitors will control the vibration demonstrating the power of an earthquake.

A collection of stone knives, grinding stones and other American Indian artifacts will be displayed at the center.

The building will include a resource center for teachers, featuring everything from conservation videos to sample lesson plans.

Pam Schulte, who teaches biology at Cape Girardeau Central High School, is thrilled by the project.

"The Conservation Department already has a real good educational program for the sciences," she said. The nature center will enhance science education both for teachers and for students who visit the place on field trips, Schulte said.

The nature center will have two mobile units: a tractor-trailer that will carry walk-though exhibits to fairs and schools and a van that will transport Conservation Department displays to area schools.

The project includes a playground with natural-looking models of native animals to climb on. There will be demonstration gardens, too, featuring habitat for hummingbirds and butterflies, as well as wild edibles and the types of plants that would have been cultivated by American Indians in the region.

A conservation campus'

A fishing pier will be constructed on the upper pond. The small, muddy pond in the park will be turned into a marsh with a boardwalk and wildlife viewing area.

A new entrance road will be built east of the large pond, across from Memorial Park Cemetery.

The old entrance would be tied into a new driving loop that would provide access to the war memorial, said A.J. Hendershott, outreach and education supervisor in the Southeast region.

Conservation officials and the architects have put a lot of thought into landscape plans for the nature center, he said. "They are not just wanting to drop rocks and plants around it."

The end result, said Hendershott, is Cape Girardeau will have a "conservation campus."